Stained Glass (8 page)

Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Stained Glass

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Amos did send young Maurice Cassidy out to St. Hilary's, to bring order out of the chaos in those file cabinets in the basement of the rectory. His reception might have been chilly if it hadn't been for Marie Murkin's susceptibility to good-looking young men. Cassidy, all five feet nine of him, curly black hair, wide face, and bright blue eyes, made Marie nostalgic for an Ireland she had never seen.

“Watch your step,” she warned as she led the young man down the basement stairs.

“I always watch my step, Mrs. Murkin.”

To describe the housekeeper's laugh as a giggle would have been unkind. She turned and looked up at him. “Do you plan to become a lawyer?”

“I am a lawyer.”

“No!” It was Marie who lost her footing then, not seeing that she had yet a step to go. Cassidy reached out and steadied her and then put his arm about her and they moved across the floor. In a moment, they were dancing. Marie could imagine what Father Dowling would think if he came upon this scene. She freed herself, reluctantly. “You don't look old enough to be a lawyer.”

“Well, I'm young enough to be one.”

“Where did you go to law school?”

“Notre Dame.”

Marie frowned. “When are they going to get a decent coach?”

“Decency has nothing to do with it. They want a winning coach. Do you watch the games?”

“It's become a Lenten penance. These are the cabinets.”

Cassidy got out his laptop and placed it on one of the cabinets. Next came the power cord, and Marie connected it for him. Maurice took off his suit jacket, and she took it.

“I'll hang this upstairs. Why would Amos Cadbury give you a job like this?”

“I'm his favorite.”

“Would you like coffee?”

“Maybe later.”

“Just call me.”

He opened a drawer, stepped back, made a face, and then began to riffle through the contents of the drawer. Marie glided up the steps. When was the last time she had danced?

Father Dowling was in his study, his breviary open, lips moving as he read the liturgy of the hours. Marie stood in the doorway. After a moment, Father Dowling laid a ribbon aslant the page and closed the book.

“The boy Amos sent is starting on those file cabinets,” Marie said.

“Boy?”

“Young man. Maurice Cassidy. He looks like an altar boy.”

“If he was an altar boy he'd be middle-aged or more.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I wonder if he'll find anything about those Devere graves in the church.”

“If they're there, he'll find them.”

Half an hour later, Father Dowling came through the kitchen and went down into the basement. Marie stood at the open door, listening to the murmur of their voices. Then she went back to her work, doing a waltz step across the kitchen floor.

Two days later Marie was in the basement, putting in a load of laundry, when Maurice cried, “Eureka!”

“I use a Hoover.” She hurried over to see the papers he was flourishing. The day before, after he left, she had come downstairs and slid open a cabinet drawer. Everything in it was neat as a pin.

“This is what Mr. Cadbury hoped I would find. Is Father Dowling in?”

Marie went upstairs with him. She liked the way they got along, the pastor and the young lawyer.

Father Dowling took the papers Maurice handed him and leafed through them, nodding. “Good work.”

“I'll take them to Mr. Cadbury.”

“Maurice must want some refreshment, Marie.”

Maurice was picking up the telephone as Marie left the study. When she came back with the soft drink, he looked at her. “Mr. Cadbury's coming out here.” He seemed surprised that the senior member of his firm would make house calls.

“Marie and Amos are old friends,” Father Dowling said.

“Oh, not old,” Maurice said. Such a lovely boy.

The document that Maurice Cassidy had found in the second file cabinet, bottom drawer, was signed by August Devere and Father Rusher, the then pastor of St. Hilary's. Amos nodded as he read it. “Richard Sullivan drew this up,” he murmured. “He was a legend in the local bar when I arrived in Fox River.”

The agreement specified that members of the Devere family would have first option to be buried in the little chapel, as long as there was room for them. The graves were considered permanent. Amos frowned. “As long as the church shall stand.”

The graves in the side chapel did not quite provide the impediment Amos had hoped for. Nonetheless, he considered the document important. He could argue that the phrase “as long as the church shall stand” had the force of “until the end of time.”

“Here's an odd thing, Father. Angelo Menotti is also mentioned as having the right to be buried in the chapel.”

Having filed an injunction against the archdiocese to stop the closing of St. Hilary's and the tearing down of its church, Amos Cadbury busied himself with other Devere family business.

Of course, he had no compunction about keeping James Devere au courant on his mother's generosity. As a member of the board of the Devere Foundation, James would have learned it all eventually, but Jane had gone to the limit of the discretionary amount she could award in her capacity as director. Like most family foundations, the Devere Foundation was a cozy arrangement, all members of the board related by blood or marriage, but the Deveres had taken Amos's advice not to have any member of the family benefit financially from the foundation. Amos was responsible for the reports to the Illinois attorney general, an office that had been filled over the
years by friends of his, and Amos had heard stories. Some family foundations were merely devices to sequester money from taxation and make it available by way of contingency funds to members of the family. Even in Illinois such sharp practice was frowned upon. Of course, there was no need for him to give lessons in ethics to the Deveres.

“If you okay it, Amos, I suppose it's all right,” Jim Devere said with reluctance. “You know what Susan says about Borloff.”

They were in the smoking room of the country club, for years a quaint anachronism but in these last days earning its name once more as newer members objected to the aroma of tobacco. Jim, like all Deveres except Jane, was an ardent cigarette smoker who delighted in producing series of smoke rings that he mentally counted as they formed before him. “Seven,” he said with pride.

“What is your record, Jim?”

“Nine. I could have claimed ten, but the last one was scarcely visible.”

“Perhaps it will become an Olympic event.”

“In this day and age?”

Amos veered away from the topic. If he wanted an apocalyptic account of the times he could go to Jim's sister, Margaret, the darling of what her niece, Susan, called the moulting right wing. How tempted Amos was to talk to Jim about a recent session he had had with Susan.

She had returned after a period of reflection that Amos had urged on her when she told him she wanted to divest herself of all the money that had come her way from the family, her trust fund, her claim on any further inheritance. “The whole shebang, Mr. Cadbury.” In political and social views, Susan was the polar opposite of Margaret Ward, but her expression as she spoke was identical to that of her ideological aunt.

“A trust fund is a rather difficult thing to undo, Susan. It represents the decision of others, not your own.”

“Isn't it mine?”

He explained patiently her limited control over the base amount. Susan received the income, but the endowment was encumbered for many years in a number of ways.

“My grandmother is giving away money hand over fist,” Susan said. “It's true about the fortune she has turned over to Carl Borloff, isn't it?”

Amos gently amended her language. The grant to the art historian came from the family foundation, and the amount involved could scarcely be called a fortune. Moreover, it had been given for a quite specific purpose, the progress of which would be carefully monitored.

“We didn't vote on it.”

“Do you plan to attend board meetings, Susan?”

“I read the minutes.”

Amos was on the board and knew that Susan had seldom come to any of its meetings, somewhat to his relief and, he supposed, that of her father and aunt as well. From time to time, she sent in suggestions for grants, most of them involving indigent artists of uncertain future.

“Your grandmother, as director, can award grants of a certain amount at her discretion, independently of the board. Of course, the board must give its approval at the next meeting.”

“What's her limit?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

“That's what she did for Carl Borloff?”

“Do you know him?”

“He's one of the parasites of the arts world, a step below gallery owners and dealers. Do you realize how many talentless oddballs make a cushy living off the work of others while real artists starve?”

“Like oddball lawyers?”

The passion left Susan, and she was full of apologies. “You know I would never think such a thing of you, Uncle Amos.”

He had been a little put off by her earlier “Mr. Cadbury,” so this reversion to honorary membership in the family was welcome. “I should hope not.”

She sprang to her feet and came around his desk and kissed his cheek. Amos felt a blush suffuse his face. “Now, now.”

She went back to her chair. “Did you ever read about St. Francis?” she asked.

“I recently read an interesting account of his life by Julian Green.”

“What a man! When I think of him just getting rid of everything, living in rags, trusting in God, talking to birds â¦” She ran out of breath. Once more her eyes sparkled with youthful enthusiasm.

“Are you thinking of becoming a Franciscan?”

“A nun?”

“I don't think you're eligible to become a brother.”

“I wonder if St. Francis would join the Franciscans if he were alive today.”

“Our Lord might have similar misgivings about Christianity, Susan.”

“I'm sure he would. Not that I'm much of a Catholic.”

“None of us is all he should be.”

She fell back in her chair, smiling. “What a diplomat you are.”

“Just a lawyer.”

She sat forward. “Right. So you'll figure out a way for me to get rid of that money, won't you?”

“Most of my clients are concerned to hang on to theirs.”

“Well, I'm not one of them.”

Amos steepled his fingers and brought their tips to his mustached lips. “What you seek to do will seem like a rebuke to your family.”

Susan made a face. “They already think I'm a fruitcake.”

“Have you talked this over with your grandmother?”

“I didn't dare.”

“Why don't we make that the next step?”

“Meanwhile I get richer and richer.”

“You can give away your income, Susan. There are no restrictions there.”

Again she sat back. “You think I'm a phony, don't you, Uncle Amos?”

“My dear, I don't even think you're a fruitcake.”

What a lovely laugh she had. Amos felt in proximate danger of receiving another kiss.

“How is your own work going, Susan?”

She let her head nod from side to side. “I'm still little more than an illustrator.”

“The house working out well?”

Amos had been involved in her buying the house in Barrington. It had seemed a more wholesome environment in which to pursue her art than others she might have chosen. Amos had gotten a fairly detailed account from Captain Keegan of the neighborhood in which local artists worked. Apparently not the most edifying area in Fox River.

“I have half a mind to share Bobby's studio.”

“Bobby?”

“Roberta Newman. We gave her a Devere grant.”

The studio was in the district Amos wanted to keep Susan out of. “I am glad you didn't do that.”

“Guess who I've met, Uncle Amos?”

Amos waited.

“A grandson of Angelo Menotti!”