St. Patrick's Day Murder (16 page)

“I’ll give you a call when she comes.”

“Oh, how super. I’ll blow away the dust.”

“Just don’t say anything about Jack. I haven’t told her yet.”

“Trust me.”

List in hand I went to the very upscale supermarket that serves this area and bought my ingredients: a flank steak; a red pepper; snow peas; mushrooms; scallions; a piece of ginger root that looked like a contemporary sculpture; and a can of water chestnuts. It looked like enough food for twice the number of people, but I’m used to leftovers and the convenience of reheating.

At home, I reviewed Mel’s instructions. They included washing, cleaning, slicing, and plastic-bagging before Joseph arrived, all of which I could do in the hour or so after I returned from teaching. Confident that my culinary career was about to be launched, I called Jack to let him know.

“What a day,” he said when he came to the phone. “Jerry McMahon didn’t show up this morning and the you-know-what hit the fan a little while ago because someone tried to cover for him.”

“What happened?”

“Who knows? Last year about this time he called on a
Monday morning and said, ‘I’ll be a little late: I’m in Bermuda and the plane’s been delayed.’ ”

“Bermuda! That must have been some weekend.”

“It was. Turned out he picked up a girl on Friday night and they hopped a plane on Saturday morning. It rained the whole weekend, but I don’t think Jerry knew what the weather was till he left for the airport.”

I felt a tingle of admiration for a soul more adventurous than my own. “Where did he call from today?”

“Nowhere. He hasn’t called. He’s probably sleeping one off somewhere and there’ll be hell to pay when he gets back. How’re you?”

“My friend Joseph is coming to visit tomorrow.”

“Sister Joseph?” he said after a moment’s delay, indicating a rather satisfying note of jealousy.

“Yes. She’s staying overnight and I’m cooking dinner for her.”

“Well, that’ll be an experience. How long has this friendship lasted?”

“A long time, and it has a long time to ran. Melanie Gross designed a dinner for me to cook easily.”

“Three hundred sixty-five ways to cook chicken?”

“I’m doing beef.”

“See? I told you you were pretty daring. I didn’t do anything but chicken for years.”

I thanked him for the compliment. “Jack, may I tell her about us?”

“Sure you can. It’s a done deal. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell anyone you want. I love you, babe.”

“That feels good.”

Hal Gross called while I was eating leftovers and reviewing Melanie’s instructions and gave me the address Carol Hanrahan had listed when she had given birth to Scotty. It could wait till Wednesday.

I retrieved my coat from the cleaner’s on my way home. Joseph was a little late, which gave me time to do everything just as I wanted. Franciscans wear an obligatory habit, and I wasn’t surprised to see a couple of small children across the street staring at my guest as she stood on my threshold. We hugged as she came in, something we didn’t do often at St. Stephen’s.

“It’s a wonderful house,” she said, with such enthusiasm that she surprised me. “You have grass and trees and shrubs and inside you have all these rooms. You must love it.”

“I do.”

“I’ve brought you a housewarming gift.” She opened her very large black handbag and pulled out a gift-wrapped package.

“Joseph, that was absolutely—”

“Unnecessary,” she finished. “Yes, it was. If it hadn’t been, I probably would have made some excuse for not getting it.”

“Thank you.” I opened it carefully. The box was several inches long and a couple wide and deep. Inside, in a flannel bag, was a tea strainer with a cup to set it in. I could tell without looking that it was silver. “Joseph,” I said, my eyes tearing, “it’s simply beautiful.”

“You deserve it. Use it happily. You used to make such a good cup of tea with that ratty old strainer, I didn’t want you to switch to tea bags.”

“I will use it,” I promised. I felt very humble, almost guilty. Here I was a homeowner, a landowner, a free spirit learning to fly, not to mention make love, and Joseph was
spending her savings on something beautiful and unnecessary.

“No tears,” she said firmly, and I nodded and busied myself putting my gift in its bag and finding a place for it in a drawer.

We sat in the living room and talked for a little while before I asked her if she’d like to visit Melanie Gross.

“I’d love to. It’ll give me a chance to see your little town.”

“Not much of it,” I said, going to the phone. “She lives just down the street.”

Melanie said she was ready and would put the coffee on. Joseph and I, after taking a minute to walk around the outside of the house, went down the road to the Grosses’.

Mel, who usually wore a running suit or pants, had put on a denim skirt and an elegant white blouse for the occasion. “This is a first for me,” she said when we were inside and our coats hung in the hall closet. “I used to see Chris sometimes when she visited her aunt, but I’ve never had a nun in my house before.”

“I think I may never have been in the home of a Jewish woman before,” Joseph said. She was looking at Mel’s menorah, which I had seen her light at Hanukkah when I came over for potato pancakes and some festivities.

“How amazing,” Mel said.

“Most of the homes I visit belong to relatives.” She turned to me. “And friends. Most of my close friends are Catholic.”

“This is a pretty diverse town,” Mel said, pouring coffee into exquisite cups that I had never seen before. “We couldn’t live here if it weren’t. But there’s certainly a clannishness below the surface. But Hal and I have friends that are almost everything you can think of. We invite and we get invited, here and in the city.”

Joseph turned to me. “And you do, too, Chris.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of an investigation I had done into the murder of an old man on Yom Kippur about six months earlier. “I like it. I’ve even picked up a surrogate father, Arnold Gold, the lawyer.”

“Yes, you told me about him.” Joseph looked pleased. “Your aunt picked a place to live that suited her and it ended up being the right place for you, too.”

“A stroke of luck,” I said. “So much in my life has been luck. I met Mel because we both take an early morning walk. I might never have run into her otherwise.”

“Chris walks,” Mel explained. “I run. We’ve managed to adapt.”

“I suppose that’s what friendship is all about. Maybe even life. Chris has a lot of experience adapting. Melanie, this is wonderful cake. You baked it, didn’t you?”

“I do that one a lot. It’s a sour cream cake, my grandmother’s recipe. It puts pounds on here, here, and here.” She touched three somewhat ample parts of her body.

Joseph laughed. “Well, I hope it does it in equal proportions. I’d like another piece.”

Melanie glowed.

We walked it off by circling the block, a pretty long distance.

“I see why you’re happy,” Joseph said. “You have lots to do and friends who love you.”

“There’s another reason.” I knew as I started to say it that I was terrified of Joseph’s reaction. “I’m going to be married.”

“Chris!” She turned to me with a big smile. “Chris, that’s wonderful.”

The sincerity of her words and voice washed over me in a huge wave of relief. “It was something that just happened. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, and at the beginning I tried—”

“Stop excusing yourself,” Joseph said. “It happened and it’s wonderful. You’re a person who’s tried very hard to plan your life carefully, with a time for this and a time for that, and nothing has ever happened on schedule or the way you thought it would. Your mother’s death, joining St. Stephen’s. Even your wanting to leave caught you by surprise. But everything works out right. As your friend said, you’re adaptable. I’m very happy for you.”

On the rest of the walk I told her about Jack, how we’d met, what he did, the law classes, the sense of humor.

“Have you met his family?”

“Just once at Christmas.”

“I’m sure they loved you.”

“We got alone fine.”

A car went by and I recognized my next-door neighbor, Midge, at the wheel. We waved to each other. She and her husband had given me a peach tree last summer, and I was crossing my fingers that it would bear fruit this year.

“What a nice place to live,” Joseph said.

I thought so myself.

Dinner went without a hitch, although I felt rattled as I cooked. Using Melanie’s timetable, I had the apple cobbler baked and still warm when we agreed on tea instead of coffee. That gave me a chance to use the new tea strainer, which added a distinct touch of class to my dinner table.

“You haven’t said a word about the murder,” Joseph said as I poured the tea. “Does that mean you have it all wrapped up?”

“It means I have endless separate threads that may or may not belong together.”

“Well, let’s hear it all.”

I gave Joseph some paper and a pencil and I took my notes and glanced at them. I started with St. Patrick’s Day, the dinner at Petra Muller’s apartment, the switching of cars when we left, the Irish coffee at Gillen’s Crossroads. I recounted the sound of the bullets, how Jean and I ran in fear to the parking lot to see how our men were. Joseph listened and asked no questions. Then I told her about Scotty’s missing birth certificate and what finally developed, his story about a military tour of duty that had never happened. And then the arrest of Ray Hansen.

“He’s the one you didn’t like.”

“It isn’t that I don’t like him. It’s that I can’t seem to get through to him. The truth is I think he doesn’t really like me. But that’s irrelevant. Jack believes Ray is innocent, and he asked me to look into it.”

“Because his hands are tied.”

“Yes.” I told her about the search of Ray’s apartment, the discovery of the bullets, the Korean grocery, and Joo’s missing gun. Then I told her about the man who telephoned Jean
and my eventual disappointment Friday night in Damrosch Park.

“Where does the Dominican nun fit in?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Harry Donner.”

She laughed. “You’re right about the threads. I’ve lost count of how many there are.”

“I think I’ve just forgotten half of them at this point.” I talked about Donner and Aunt Benny, my visit to the villa at the convent, my sense that Sister Benedicta knew more than she was saying, but who could tell if any of it was relevant?

Joseph looked down at her notes and asked a few questions about Scotty’s birth certificate, Gavin Moore, and Joe Farina. I knew she must be tired. She would have gotten up at five this morning for prayers before leaving for New York.

“Tell me again about the switching of cars.”

I recounted how Scotty had tossed his keys to Jack, how Jack had reciprocated, how we had followed in the BMW as Scotty led the way to the bar.

“You think it was Jack the killer was after.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s look at the cars again,” Joseph said. “Before you went to”—she looked at her notes—“Petra Muller’s apartment, where were you?”

I felt my face redden and knew I would not be able to keep my composure. Jack’s car in my driveway overnight was one thing; alluding to my sexual relationship in a conversation with Joseph was another. “We drove from his apartment in Brooklyn Heights,” I said carefully. “Jack marched in uniform. He wanted to change out of it before we went to Petra’s.”

“You drove from Brooklyn Heights in his car,” Joseph said, as though I had described a visit to a candy store.

“Yes.”

“And before that?”

“There was a huge party given by the Emerald Society at a pier in Manhattan. I met Jack there after the parade and we drove from there to Brooklyn Heights in his car.”

“So anyone watching you and Jack leave the pier knew what car he drove.”

“Maybe the killer didn’t start following until later, when we left Petra’s apartment.”

“How did he know you were there?”

I couldn’t answer that. My beautiful theory was falling apart.

“Tell me again what Jack and Scotty look like,” Joseph said.

I described them in quick sketches: Scotty tall, lean, wiry, sandy-haired; Jack shorter by an inch or two, a little heavier, probably broader in the shoulders, curly-haired. “He complained that his uniform had gotten a little tight,” I finished, with a smile.

“So you couldn’t mistake the two, at least not if you could see them. What about Mrs. McVeigh?”

“She’s a torch in the darkness,” I said. “A flaming redhead, thin, a little shorter than I.”

“But she wasn’t with him when he was shot.”

“We were both just inside the bar.”

“But if someone had been watching Scotty since earlier in the day, it wouldn’t have mattered which car he drove in if the redheaded woman was with him.”

“Right.”

“I wish I could see a motive,” she said.

“So do I.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything obvious. Tell me again about the Korean man, Mr. Joo.”

I went through it once more, the gun allegedly missing the day after St. Patrick’s Day and never reported. “Arnold Gold says he’ll probably never get a license to carry a handgun again because of this.”

“You think he had nothing to do with the killing, don’t you?”

“There’s no motive,” I said. “Scotty helped his family get started.”

Joseph smiled. “And you like them. You’ll never convict anyone you like. What’s interesting about that missing gun is that Mr. Joo said it was stolen after St. Patrick’s Day. He must have known that would sound suspicious. After all, he knew Officer McVeigh had died the night before. If he was
fabricating the story, it seems to me he would have said the gun was stolen before St. Patrick’s Day, not after.”

“I agree. That’s one of the reasons I believe him.”

“Still, it’s a disconcerting coincidence. One of those cousins could have ‘borrowed’ the gun to shoot Scotty and then stolen it afterward so that the case against Mr. Joo couldn’t be made conclusively.”

“The whole case is very frustrating,” I said. “Nothing adds up. Ray is the least forthcoming person I’ve ever tried to talk to, and all my avenues seem to be dead ends. Not to mention that I’m still worried that it’s Jack they’re after in spite of your very logical explanation of why it can’t be so.”