The Prudence of the Flesh (29 page)

Agnes had told Cy about the old VW Bug in the Murphy garage. He was not exactly encouraging her fantastic theory that Marvin might have done away with Ned Bunting. The problem was, they had nothing else, not even another fantastic theory. Pasquali had been released, thanks to Marie Murkin's certainty that she had seen him in St. Hilary's Church during the time period in which Bunting met his death. At least the head librarian of the Benjamin Harrison branch had had a motive. He was a rival for the affections of Gloria Daley, and he had flipped Bunting on his ear to prove it. It would have made more sense if Bunting had done in Pasquali. Tuttle had acted as if he regularly got charges against his clients dropped.

“Good try, Horvath, but it was a waste of taxpayers' money,” the lawyer said in parting.

“I was going to ask you about that.”

Tuttle, his hat at a jaunty tilt, had started off with Pasquali, but now he turned. “Ask me what?”

“Oh, I'll let the feds explain it to you. I told them I knew nothing about your finances.”

Tuttle's triumphant smile dissolved into doubt and worry. A small victory, but when one has been bested by such a one as Tuttle, small victories count. It didn't make up for the way Tuttle had made a fool of him with those envelopes of evidence.

“How were you to know?” Pippen asked. They were having coffee in the courthouse cafeteria, where Cy had come after sending a confused Tuttle on his way with Pasquali.

“I got them from Tuttle.” She waited. “Tuttle. You know Tuttle. I just took his word for it.”

“No, you took the word of Gregory Barrett's son. At second hand.”

When Cy had told his wife about the phony test and where the materials had come from, she laughed. That was about what it deserved, but it was nice to have Pippen sympathetic.

Pippen was a problem for Cy Horvath. He loved his wife, and even if he didn't he wouldn't cheat on her. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and he was not about to speed it on its way. Even so, in some remote world of the imagination, he wondered what it would have been like to meet Pippen when they were both free to do something about it. Pointless speculation, as wild as Agnes Lamb's theory about Marvin. Cy had a wife and Pippen had a husband. Nonetheless, on the job, they were buddies.
She probably thinks of me as a big brother,
Cy told himself.
A dumb big brother.
The trouble was, he didn't think of her as a sister. Her willowy body, her mischievous green eyes, her thick golden hair gathered into a ponytail or, sometimes, a long braid that bounced off her back—these added up to beauty for Cy.
Still, he prided himself on the conviction that she had no idea in the world what his real feelings for her were. Feelings, not thoughts, not plans. He had talked about it in the confessional with Father Dowling.

“Impure desires?” the priest had asked.

“No, nothing like that.”

“And no acts?”

“Never.”

“So why are you confessing it?”

“I feel badly about it.”

“Maybe you should try to see less of the woman.”

“All right.”

“Innocent as it has apparently been, she seems to represent a possible occasion of sin for you.”

“Oh, no, Father, I would never do that.”

“As Adam said to Eve.”

Cy agreed to see less of the woman, nameless there in the dark. The whole process was anonymous and intimate. Roger Dowling was the same man behind the screen as he always was, but in the confessional the priest wasn't Father Dowling and he wasn't Cy Horvath. Even if Roger Dowling had suspected who the penitent was, he would have erased the thought. That made the confessional the only place Cy could talk about his odd attraction to Pippen.

He tried to see her less often, but the more he tried, the more he ran into her. So his not wholly unwelcome problem continued.

Now, in the cafeteria, he told her about Agnes Lamb's suspicion of Marvin.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Pippen said.

“I'd like to know how. The harm has been done to his mother. She had retracted her charge against Gregory Barrett. So Ned Bunting threatened to write it up anyway. Barrett's kid has made a mockery of DNA testing. The smart thing to do would be to let it fade away.”

“But is he smart?”

“He's kept an old VW Bug running.”

“The original?”

“This might be one Hitler drove, according to Agnes.”

“I don't like the new ones.”

“It's pretty hard to find an old one.”

“I'd like to see it.”

Cy realized that he wanted to see that old car, too. Pippen went back to the cool of the morgue, and he signed out a car and just drove. He was as accessible in his car as in his office, and there wasn't much going on. These were arguments that he really wasn't wasting his time.

When he turned into the street on which the Murphys lived, the old VW was just starting away from the curb, making quite a racket. Cy passed it, glancing at Marvin behind the wheel, made a U-turn, and followed.

Smoke poured from the exhaust of the little car, and Cy thought of pulling him over. Just a thought. Marvin lurched along, doing a lot of shifting, laying a lot of smoke. Then he arrived at his destination. The Benjamin Harrison branch of the public library. He put his car in a handicapped spot and loped toward the door. Cy called in for a tow truck.

The crew could have lifted the little VW onto the flatbed, but they put down the ramps and used their towing apparatus, being careful how they hooked on. They didn't want to get the front
bumper and leave the car. Cy sped them on their way, not to impoundment but to the lab.

He figured going along with Agnes was no dumber than going along with Tuttle on the DNA test. The lab people could check out the car and see what they might see.

“Beware of answered prayers,” Gloria said to Pasquali. They were in her studio, among dozens of finished and unfinished canvases. “What if I had been a successful painter?”

Pasquali looked around. “Some of these look pretty good.”

“As good as those you hung in the library?”

“People talk about them.” He seemed to be choosing his words.

Gloria had been charmed by the thought of Fred saying a novena so that all would go right with them. If only he had some fire in him. Ned had wanted to be a writer—in the worst way, as Gloria had come to think, and his wishes had been fulfilled. Not even Gloria could find much to praise in the piece he had written about Father Dowling. Now, when she remembered Fred laying Ned Bunting out on her front lawn, she almost resented this treatment of the former usher. Then again, Fred had acted because of her. The two men had been fighting over her, hadn't they?

“How long before you retire, Fred?”

“Retire? I'm nowhere near sixty.”

“You can do what you do anywhere, can't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven't you ever wanted to just get away from Fox River? Go somewhere interesting. Taos, Santa Fe . . .”

“Is that what you'd like to do?”

“No one's asked me.”

Men are so manipulable. He pulled his chair closer to the stool on which she sat, wearing a smock, her easel before her. She let him take her hand.

“Let's talk about it, Gloria.”

Well, that was more than Ned Bunting had wanted to do. Oh, he would talk, but he'd had his own idea of paradise.

“San Miguel de Allende. I read about it in a writers' magazine. The cost of living is low, wine is cheap. I could write in the daytime, you could paint, and at night . . .” His voice had grown husky.

“Where is it?”

“Mexico.”

“Mexico! Not on your life.”

Fred was saying that he would look into library jobs in New Mexico when her cell phone rang. She plucked it from her pocket.

It was Maddie, all excited. “Someone has stolen Marvin's car! He parked it in front of the library, and when he went out it was gone. Then he just disappeared.”

“Have you called the police?”

“He was looking for Fred Pasquali.”

Gloria smiled at Fred. “Has he gone over there?”

A pause on the line. “Isn't he with you?”

“Did you suggest that to him?”

“Tell Mr. Pasquali the vagrants are back at the computers.”

The line went dead.

“Maddie,” Gloria reported.

Fred looked guilty. He was playing hooky. Ever since his arrest, he had been an infrequent presence in his office at the library.

“Marvin's car was stolen and he's run off somewhere, and she thinks he's lost.”

“Madeline is a very jumpy woman.”

Gloria patted his hand and stood. “Coffee?”

He came with her into the kitchen. While she made the coffee, Gloria considered how unjust it was that Maddie had turned on her. If anything, recent events should have brought them closer together. Of course, Maddie had listened to Marvin when he told her that none of this would have happened if she hadn't listened to Gloria. Alas, there was truth in that, Even so, Gloria had no regrets. When Tuttle had turned up those records of how Gregory Barrett had counseled Maddie, a picture began to emerge for her. Women had to stand together.

They were still waiting for the coffee to finish when Marvin banged on the door. He came in furious, as if Gloria were responsible for the theft of his car, but Pasquali was his real target. “What kind of a library are you running down there? My poor mother has to spend her day tolerating vagrants at all the computers. A person can't even park his car there without it being stolen.”

“There's never been a car stolen from the parking lot of the Benjamin Harrison branch,” Pasquali said, answering anger with anger.

“Parking lot? I parked it in the street.”

“In the street?”

“In front of the entrance.”

“But there are no parking places there, unless you're handicapped.”

“What difference does that make?”

“If I were you, young man,” Pasquali said, calm now, “I would call the police garage and see if my car hasn't been impounded.”

“I wasn't there more than . . .” Marvin wasn't sure how long he had been in the library after parking on the street. His mother, when he found her, was distraught because the vagrants were once more at the computers. Marvin solved that problem immediately: He went to the bank of computers and unplugged them all.

A snarling chorus went up as the monitors went blank. The men jostled together, and one became their spokesman. “Why in hell did you do that?”

“Time out for some technical troubleshooting, gentlemen. We should have these back in service in a week or two. Meanwhile, I suggest you take your business to the Theodore Roosevelt branch. Any policeman can give you directions.”

And he led his mother away. “They'll plug them in again,” she said.

“I doubt it. I'll unplug them. Better, I'll deactivate the electricity in that area. Where is the fuse box?”

Pasquali's office. Unlikely, but they went in there.

“Mom, you've got to get out of this place.”

“Where would I go?”

“Florida?”

“Florida! My vacation isn't for months.”

“I don't mean a vacation. Look, I've made some money lately, quite a bit of money. We can afford the move. If you want to work in Florida, okay; if not, well, that's okay, too.”

“You'll take care of me?”

He hugged her. “Turnabout is fair play.”

She ran her fingers over his bearded face as if she were trying to find there the lineaments of his father's.

“They want me to take a DNA test with Barrett.”

She stepped back. “That's nonsense.”

“Of course it is, but it will clear the board. Then we drive off to Florida and put it all behind us.”

“In your Volkswagen?” But she was hugging him again.

When Pasquali said that Marvin's car had probably been ticketed and towed, in the phrase, a light dawned in the young man's eyes. “Gloria, can I borrow your car?”

“What for?”

“Just for an hour or so.”

Gloria looked at Fred. He lifted his shoulders. Doubtless he wanted to get the young man out of the house. Gloria got her car keys and gave them to Marvin.

“Do you have my cell phone number?”

They exchanged numbers, and then Marvin was at the door.

“I like your beard,” Gloria said.