Prodigal Father (25 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective

BOOK: Prodigal Father
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Consider my affliction and deliver me.
—Psalm 119
 
“Of course he can't find him,” Hazel sneered. “The man is an idiot.”
“He is a licensed private detective.”
“Dogs have licenses.” And she looked at Tuttle as if she were going to make an invidious comparison with his credentials as a lawyer.
Farniente had been keeping vigil outside Leo Corbett's deserted apartment on the chance that he might return.
“But he moved out,” Tuttle said, glad that Hazel wasn't there at the Great Wall where he was receiving the detective's report, which was heavy on what Farniente had been doing, or not doing, and empty so far as the object of his search, Leo Corbett, went.
“What if he is a homing pigeon?”
Farniente was a turkey, in Hazel's judgment. She had completely reversed her estimate of the detective, whom she had regarded at first as an upwardly social move from Peanuts Pianone. (“At least he can speak.”) So can dogs, Tuttle thought, remembering it now. But Farniente had plunged in Hazel's judgment when he hadn't delivered Leo to the office within hours of taking the assignment.
“What's he doing?”
“A man has to eat and sleep.”
“We're talking of men?”
Hazel in a bad mood was only a tick of the clock away from Hazel in a good mood, but she hadn't been in a good mood since Leo, the “golden calf,” had disappeared from sight. Behind the closed door of his office, among the neatness and order, Tuttle brooded. He reviewed his meeting with Leo in the courthouse, he remembered the pivotal scene when, with Leo at his elbow, he had outlined for Tetzel the series that was to put Leo definitively into the picture as the grandson who had been jobbed out of his heritage by a senile grandfather scattering his wealth to the winds. Had he expressed admiration for the success of the series? The only article of Tetzel's he had commented on was the last which all but featured the unfortunate Father Nathaniel.
“How'm I going to get anything if they sell?”
“Talk, Leo, talk. That's all it is.”
But in truth, Tuttle was made nervous by signs that the Athanasians were open to a deal with Lars Anderson. It was easy to enter into Leo's discontent. The poor lad had been in the habit of haunting the one-time estate of his grandfather. Tuttle had been surprised by how well Leo knew the grounds: He seemed to carry a map of the place around in his too-large head.
“My father would have started digging there if he had gotten the place.”
Leo was a man of many discontents. Why should it surprise him that a man who spoke with such contempt of his father should be deficient in every loyalty? Tuttle himself was oriental in his reverence for his father, the parent who had never lost faith in his son.
“Farniente, listen,” he said in the Great Wall where his supposed employee was gobbling down half a dozen dishes at the same time. “Forget the apartment.”
He directed Farniente to camp outside Anderson Ltd.
“You think old Lars will lead me to him?”
Tuttle sighed. A man like Anderson left his fingerprints nowhere. He had flunkies to do his work for him. He told the detective about the young woman who was Anderson's right hand, of whose activities his left hand was supposedly unaware.
“Tail Charlotte Priebe,” Tuttle ordered.
Within hours, Farniente, to his own surprise, had struck oil. He had followed Charlotte to where she lived and ingratiated himself with a woman who spent several morning hours mopping the lobby floor. They discussed the businesslike young woman who lived in an apartment on the third floor.
“Alone?”
Matilda's eyes slid back and forth and she showed her irregular teeth in a smile. “Not anymore.”
Matilda's description of the man who had moved in with Charlotte was close enough to Leo Corbett to make Farniente bring out his cell phone. He hesitated, thinking of Hazel, then rang the number.
“Tuttle & Tuttle,” Hazel said with sweet efficiency.
“I've found him.”
“Farniente?”
“Yes. Give me Tuttle.”
An excited Tuttle came on in a minute, with Hazel chattering advice in the background as Farniente reported.
“Don't move. I'll be there in twenty minutes.”
It was a half hour before he got there, and Farniente was nowhere to be found. Tuttle went into the lobby and sidestepped a mop wielded by a woman who seemed to be memorizing the floor. Tuttle got out a twenty-dollar bill and began to fold it lengthwise, keeping the denomination prominent. This distracted the cleaning lady from the floor. Her eyes fixed on the twenty.
“He left,” she said, when he described Farniente.
“Did he say where he was going?” He asked it in despair.
“He was following the man.”
“Ah.” In his elation, Tuttle gave her the bill which had been intended only as a prop to gain her attention. He went back to his car, got behind the wheel, pulled his tweed hat over his face, and waited. Thus did Napoleon wait on Elba, thus had Patton stewed in England before being given the Third Army. Unlike these lofty analogues, he fell asleep, sweet sleep coming as it will when the clouds lift, and the sun once more puts in an appearance.
When he awoke, he called Hazel. “Have you heard from him?”
“Aren't you with him?”
“That answers my question.”
“Lose him again and you lose a secretary.”
A tempting offer, but Tuttle let it go. He called Farniente's cell phone, risking distracting the detective from his task. There was no answer.
Clouds gathered, the sun went into eclipse, darkness fell on
the soul of Tuttle. In such a slough of despond, he was shaken when someone bumped into the back of his car. He pushed back his tweed hat and looked angrily into the rearview mirror. It was Farniente who had pulled in behind him. And then Tuttle saw Leo going into the building. When Leo was inside, Tuttle got out of his car and went back to Farniente, ignoring the angry horns of motorists who swerved to avoid him. Farniente had his window rolled down and a smile of triumph on his narrow face.
“Where did he go?”
“In and out of several buildings, then back here.”
Tuttle relieved Farniente. He would take up the vigil himself. An hour passed and then Leo appeared, loaded with luggage, clothes draped over his arm. He carried them to his car and tossed them inside. When he pulled away, Tuttle was hard behind him. Leo drove with abandon but with an end in view. The hotel was two blocks from the building Leo had moved out of a few days before. He parked, gathered up his belongings, and went inside. Five minutes later, Tuttle went in to see about renting a room.
“Full,” said a voice from behind a newspaper. Tuttle, throwing all habits of parsimony to the winds, displayed a twenty-dollar bill over the newspaper. The
Sun-Times
set and a wizened man wearing an Irish tweed hat looked up at Tuttle. He saw Tuttle's hat. A camaraderie was established. The young man who had just moved in? Leo Corbett. He took the room for a week. Tuttle pushed the twenty across the counter. The twin of his tweed hat swayed negatively.
“Keep it.”
Tuttle felt that he had been readmitted to human society, where people trusted one another, where favors were done without the prospect of gain, where he was not the only one who wore a tweed hat throughout the year.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge.
—Psalm 119
 
Stanley Morgan might have been freed on bail, or gone free without it, if he had followed advice and hired a lawyer. But he remained in a cell while the judge sought someone available to come to Morgan's defense at the county's expense. The questions raised by young George's story about cleaning up the maintenance shed would have provided a reasonable basis for letting Morgan go free. But, to Phil Keegan's relief, Morgan remained in custody.
“He wants to see a priest,” Phil said on the phone to Father Dowling.
“Is he Catholic?”
“I didn't ask. Why else would he want to see a priest? The man has something on his mind. It would be crazy to let him out.”
“I'll be down, Phil.”
Phil would, of course, be thinking what he himself was. A priest was sought to make a confession and it could be that what Morgan would not admit to the police he would tell a priest under the seal of the confessional. But before Father Dowling left the rectory, Marie announced that Michael George had come to see
him. When she brought the young man to the study, she had a protective arm around his shoulders.
“Here he is, Father.” She might have been producing a long-sought friend.
He thanked Marie. Michael seemed glad to get out from under that maternal embrace.
“Rita came to see you,” he said, when the door was shut.
“You were with her.”
“She came yesterday, alone.”
Father Dowling fell silent as he thought about the day before. He had been away from the rectory for several hours. He would have liked to summon Marie Murkin and ask her in front of this young man if she had been practicing without a license. But such pusillanimous thoughts did not seem fitting given the anguish on his visitor's face.
“If she did, I didn't see her. I was out part of the day.”
Michael almost relaxed. “We came to talk to you about getting married. Now I think she is changing her mind. Because of Father Nathaniel's death.”
“From what I've heard, you've all but admitted to killing him.”
“I told them what I did. That's all. If they want to make me a murderer, okay.”
“Okay?”
“I cleaned up the maintenance shed.”
“why?”
“Because my father liked everything in its place, tools, machines, everything.”
“So you did it for your father?”
“Did Rita say that?”
“I told you I haven't spoken with her since the two of you were here together. Is that what she thinks?”
Michael was silent, working his mouth, searching Father Dowling's face.
“Is that what you're doing, Michael? Do you think your father killed Nathaniel?”
“No!” The word emerged like a primal scream.
“Then why did you feel you had to clean up the shed? Whoever attacked the priest must have done it there. You were making it difficult for the police to find any clues or indications of who it might have been.”
Father Dowling was certain the story would come out, and eventually it did. Michael had come here because Rita had, and he thought she had told him that her fiancé was willing to risk being charged with murder in order to protect his father. His account of that morning made clear why he had acted as he had.
The night before the murder, at the lodge, his father and Stanley Morgan had talked about Nathaniel, Morgan telling Mr. George of his experiences with the former priest in California. They were drinking retsina wine and his father was affected by it as he always was when he drank too deep. The two men agreed that Nathaniel was a devil.
“I'm here to let him know I'm here. Maybe I can stop the trouble he is causing.”
“I'd like to go after him with a hedge trimmer,” George cried.
That was the drunken threat Michael remembered the following morning. He had not expected his father to rise as early as was his custom. But he was not in his bed. Michael, before having breakfast, went to see if he was already at work, making up for the previous night's excess by getting to work at the crack of dawn. When he came to the grotto, Michael saw Nathaniel on the kneeler, the ax buried in his back. He had never seen a dead man, but he was sure the priest was dead. He hurried on to the
maintenance shed where chaos had replaced order. What would his father say? And then he thought, My God, he did it. And then he set to work cleaning up, removing hurriedly the traces of a struggle, splashing paint over the blood on the workbench that would not wipe away. When he was done, he heard someone running toward the shed and he stepped out to meet his father.
“Someone killed him,” his father cried. “I have to phone Father Boniface.”
Michael returned to the house and waited and soon the 911 ambulance roared up the drive and backed down the path to the grotto, being directed by his father.
“That doesn't sound like a guilty man.”
Yet both father and son had feared that the other was a murderer. But two men had sat over retsina the night before, two men had talked of avenging themselves on Nathaniel.
“And your guest disappeared. Now he has been arrested.”
“He was just taking up my father's anger.”
“Was he? He had a real past grievance against Nathaniel. Your father's fear was for what Nathaniel would do.”
“Father, I don't know.”
“Do you want my advice? Go talk to your father. Tell him what you thought and why you did what you did.”
“How could I tell him that?”
“How can you not tell him now? Believe me, it will come to him as a tremendous relief.”
“If he didn't do it.”
“Won't he tell you if he did?”
Michael did not know. But his agony had deepened because he avoided his father, afraid to speak to him. He decided that he would rather hear his father's response, no matter what it was.
“And the two of you should then tell the police everything.”
 
 
Father Dowling thus went downtown to speak with Stanley Morgan, wondering if he was not on his way to speak to the murderer of Father Nathaniel.

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