The Widow's Mate (12 page)

“I thought you were in charge of altar boys,” Father Dowling had commented.

“Hmph.”

Altar boys were a thing of the past now. Father Dowling found that he preferred saying Mass without one, not that there were all that many boys in the parish anymore. Nor did he enlist the aid of eucharistic ministers, who swarmed over the sanctuary in most parishes, their help unnecessary and making the distribution of Communion a protracted and distracting process.

“Maybe you ought to talk to Melissa,”

“Doesn't she know about his checkered past?”

“She's a woman.” Phil seemed to think that covered a multitude of weaknesses. Well, he had a lot of poets with him on that score. Frailty, thy name is woman. Father Dowling made no promises, not that Phil expected one.

Now Melissa had come to the rectory. “I want you to say a Mass for Wally. My husband.”

“Of course.”

She opened her purse, and he put up a staying hand. “No need for that.”

“But I would like you to say more than one.”

“How many?”

She looked at him sadly. “Of course, you know the story. What on earth was he doing all those years after he left me?”

“The police are looking into that now.”

“They are?” She seemed undecided whether to feel good about it. “After all these years?”

“Well, the finding of your husband's body brought it to their attention again.”

“But that, too, is years ago.”

Uncertain if he should tell her that it was at Amos Cadbury's urging that the investigation had been undertaken until its completion, Father Dowling remained quiet, allowing Melissa to reflect on his silence.

“Sometimes I think I don't want to find out.”

“I can understand that.” How much did she know? He had no inclination to tell her that the woman her husband had planned to run off with had married his boyhood friend Gregory Packer, who was now living in the apartment over her garage.

She turned and looked out the window. “I think I've done something stupid.”

He waited.

She faced him again. “You know Greg Packer.”

He nodded.

“I've let him use an apartment over the garage, and my father-in-law is furious.”

“And you think it was stupid to do that.”

“I should have thought of what it would look like to others.”

“Gossip?”

“It's silly, of course, but suddenly it struck me how others might interpret it.”

“I assume it's temporary.”

“But I didn't say for how long. He's trying to get settled.”

“It probably would be wiser if he settled somewhere else. Than in the apartment, I mean.”

“To me, he's just a little boy I used to know. Most of the time, we talk about what we did as kids.”

She seemed to want him to say something, but he didn't know what that might be. “So how many Masses would you like said?”

“Once a month?”

The Mass book was there in the parlor. He opened it and began to write. This time when she opened her purse, he did not stop her. Marie would never forgive him if he did.

*   *   *

“I suppose it's all confidential,” Marie said when Mrs. Flanagan had gone.

“Not all.”

Marie perked up.

“You've made a conquest.”

Marie was puzzled. “But I haven't spoken two words to her.”

“I meant Gregory Packer.”

Marie stepped back, biting her lip, then fled down the hall.

*   *   *

A call from Amos Cadbury the following day told Father Dowling how Melissa had decided to solve her problem. “She wants to lend him the money to open a driving range.”

“Ah.”

“You've heard about the episode in California.”

“Are you afraid she might marry him?”

“Good Lord. Don't even think it. Luke would hit the ceiling.”

“What advice did you give her?”

“She's a grown woman, Father. If she wants to waste money on that fellow, there is little I can do to stop her.”

As it turned out, Amos would be involved in the transfer of money. “I want to make sure he uses it for the purpose for which it is given. I've asked him to come see me.”

*   *   *

Gregory Packer did not show up for the appointment. Amos, not used to being stood up, had his driver take him to the Flanagan house, going around to the garage. He mounted the steps to the apartment and was surprised to find the door unlocked. He pushed it open. The late Gregory Packer lay on the floor in a dried pool of blood.

Part Two

1

Cy, having been informed directly by Amos, picked up Dr. Pippen in the coroner's office and set off for the Flanagan house.

“What's so hush-hush?”

“I want to take a look before sounding the alarm.”

Pippen shrugged. Then she was distracted by the neighborhood. “Such lovely houses! What happened?”

“Progress.”

“Some of them seem in pretty good repair.”

But not all. Many a young family who took on one of the grand old houses in this part of Fox River was surprised by what it cost to maintain such a place.

“Is this your old neighborhood, Cy?”

“Where I grew up is now a freeway.”

“More progress?”

“Believe me, the house was no loss.”

Nonetheless, he wished it were still there so he could at least drive by and look at the house he had grown up in. Greg Packer's house, a duplex, had gone to eminent domain as well. Of the three old friends, altar boys at St. Hilary's, only Wally had a house that still stood, and he hadn't given a damn.

Amos Cadbury's driver had backed the lawyer's car down the driveway, effectively blocking it. He was standing beside the rear door, on the lookout, and when Cy drove up, he tapped at the window. Amos emerged slowly from the backseat and waited for Cy and Pippen to come to him. The venerable lawyer bowed to Pippen and then looked wordlessly at Cy. He nodded toward the garage.

“Will you need me, Lieutenant?”

“You're not leaving?”

“Oh, no.” Still, it was obvious that Amos would have liked to flee the horror he had come upon.

Cy swung up the driveway with Pippen at his side, a bag slung over her shoulder, her ponytail swishing. Only God knew how delighted Cy was by their proximity.

The door to the covered stairway was open, but before going up, Cy looked around. He was beginning to wish that he had treated this as an ordinary case, but the anguish in Amos Cadbury's voice had prompted this unusual procedure. Pippen, too, was looking around. She said to Cy, “See anything?”

He shook his head and started up the stairs.

Amos had left the door of the apartment open, too, and again Cy looked about before going inside. He went around the body, and then Pippen was kneeling beside Gregory Packer.

“Dead?”

“As a mackerel.”

While Pippen called for the medical examiner's team, Cy walked slowly through the apartment.

The living room looked as if it had been tidied up, and the kitchen was unusually spick and span for an aging bachelor's. No dishes in the sink. The place mats on the table seemed to protect the wicker basket that served as a centerpiece; it was empty. It seemed unlikely that Greg Packer had been such a fastidious housekeeper. Cy eased open a cupboard. Stacks of dishes and cups. Neat as a pin. This place would have to be dusted for fingerprints. Then he noticed the rubber gloves draped over the edge of the sink. Even so. Only a professional would leave no fingerprints at all.

Pippen was back on her cell phone, wondering where in the world the truck with her crew was. They were on their way. Cy called the police lab to get their crew out here as well. Then he stood and looked down at the dead body of his old classmate. The moment called for prayer. He pulled out his phone and called the St. Hilary rectory.

*   *   *

Father Dowling got there before either of the crews. He knelt beside the body, eyes closed, a ribbonlike stole over his shoulders. His lips moved, and he made the sign of the cross over the remains of Gregory Packer.

“He's already dead, Father,” Pippen said.

He nodded, but his expression suggested that at the moment he was open to theories that death comes on long after the so-called vital signs are absent.

Pippen's crew then arrived, and Cy went with Father Dowling to Amos Cadbury's car, which had now been backed into the street to admit official vehicles. The lawyer looked at the priest.

Father Dowling nodded. “I gave him conditional absolution.”

“Rest his soul.”

Cy cleared his throat. “Tell me all about it, Mr. Cadbury.”

2

The violent death of Greg Packer brought a stunned stillness to St. Hilary's parish.

In the senior center, men and women who had been more or less ignored by Packer when he was with them, preferring to be alone with Melissa Flanagan, now remembered him with affection, even grief. Memories that over long lifetimes had learned the art of selection brought back a Greg Packer who had been one of them. He had never played bridge or shuffleboard, he had not played billiards, and few could have recalled anything he had said to them or vice versa, but when the news came, it seemed a call for mourning.

“We should all go over to church and recite the rosary for him,” Mimi Popich said.

Lenore Holland let out a little cry. She was still holding her cards, fanned against her bosom lest anyone see what she held.

Gino Bacci suggested a moment of silence.

“Good. Good idea.”

Chins dropped to chests. Lenore took another peek at her cards before closing her eyes.

“May he rest in peace,”

“Amen.”

“Who wants to go over to the church?” Mimi asked, but she was ignored.

They would have to keep a collective eye on Mimi. Bursts of showy devotion were often danger signs. Advanced age could make people think they could offset a lifetime of humdrum attention to religious duties with a razzle-dazzle ending. Spending hours kneeling in the church or at the grotto or sighing aloud could be the beginning. Mimi herself had taken to wearing a shawl over her head and shoulders when she stopped by the grotto or went to church, affecting a peasant look as if she were trying to be Saint Bernadette. Usually these enthusiasms burned themselves out like a fever, and the old man or woman was no worse for wear, maybe even better for it, but there was always the possibility that a bout of exaggerated devotion would give way to a compensatory skepticism.

Gino Bacci, who had done well with his pizza parlor until Domino's moved into the neighborhood, had been saying fifteen decades of the rosary every day, for the late Mrs. Bacci but for himself as well. That might have been all right, but then he started making Holy Hours in the church. It was when he asked Father Dowling if the church could be left unlocked at night so he could get in that it was clear he needed to be brought down to earth. They hid his beads; they went with him to the church and carried on conversations in the pew behind him. Finally a more desperate remedy was needed. Lenore Holland was called into action. “But I knew Maria,” she protested.

“All the better.”

Lenore stuck to Gino like glue, hanging on his arm, babbling away about how much she missed Maria. He tried to get away, but she had a good grip on his arm, and then she was whispering into Gino's copious ear. They wandered up the path to a bench. For three days, they were inseparable. When he became a pest, Lenore told him to go peddle his papers.

“I sold pizza.”

“Do you play cards?”

“No. But I can learn.”

“Come back when you have.”

That cast Gino for the role of village atheist, and he began to make remarks to shock the ladies. They just made faces at him, but Tim Toohy protested. “We have to answer for every word we say. You better be careful.”

“You think God's listening?”

“Of course he is.”

“All over the world, to everybody?”

“It's a mystery.”

“You can say that again.”

“It's a mystery.” Of Tim, Gino was wont to say that he was not a fastball pitcher.

But Gino, too, was hit hard by the news of the death of Greg Packer, hence his proposal of a minute's silence for their fallen friend. Friend? Well, you know what I mean.

“I never know what you mean,” Tim said.

“Show me how to play bridge.”

Like many of limited intelligence, Tim Toohy was a masterful card player. He picked up a deck, riffled it, cut it, shuffled, did everything but run the cards up his arm. A friendship was born. Gino would have liked to show Tim how he had sailed a disc of dough toward the ceiling, caught it, twirled it, flipped it up again. Art speaks to art.

“I suppose there was a falling-out,” Tim said.

“What do you mean?”

“With the Flanagan woman. He had moved in with her.”

“Come on.”

“An apartment over the garage. The one old Luke had meant to live in.”

“You knew Luke?”

“I worked for the SOB.” Tim had shocked himself.

“You were in cement?”

Tim had been a dispatcher, sending out the trucks. The two men stared across the table at one another. The phrase had brought back the fate of Luke Flanagan's only son.

“You know what I thought when they removed the body from the mixer?”

“I don't want to hear.” Gino was damned if he was going to let Tim get started on the Pianones.

“Packer's death is probably connected with that.”

“You watch too much TV. Deal the cards.”

The fact was that Gino had seriously thought of enlisting the help of the Pianones when the competition from Domino's affected his business. He did talk to Marco, the Pianone who collected his insurance. Marco listened, nodding, saying nothing. The next day he was back. “Sell.”