Relic of Time (9 page)

When Ibanez heard of the replica of the grotto at Lourdes that Hannan had built on the grounds of Empedocles, he asked him to come out and see his own replica of the basilica in Mexico City. Hannan made a special flight to see it, bringing Laura and Ray along. And so Laura had met Clare and they became friends. Laura had been given accounts of the tragic progress of Clare's relations with George Worth, and she knew of her part-time employment with Jason Phelps, their agnostic neighbor. The terrible news of the kidnapping of Don Ibanez sent Laura rushing in to tell Nate.

“Have you talked to her?”

“I'd like to be with her.”

A beat or two, then a nod of his head. He picked up the phone and gave the order. “They'll be ready whenever you are.”

“Oh, Nate. Thank you.”

“I may come out myself.” It was as much question as statement. Laura kept his schedule.

“You have four days with appointments that could easily be postponed.”

“Get a hold of Crosby. And keep me posted.”

Posted! This venerable cliché evoked snail mail, and coming from one of the agents of the instantaneous communication and dispersal of information it seemed truly quaint. She had a fleeting image of the Pony Express from a book of her girlhood, the rider racing from post to post, the brim of his hat blown back, saddlebags filled with letters written on lightweight paper. Like World War II V-mail, Ray had said.

“How would you know?”

“How did you know about the Pony Express?”

Now that she was married to Ray, Nate had mixed feelings about her continuing at Empedocles. A married woman should stay home, that was his conviction, held all the more firmly by a single man.

“What would I do at home?”

“Once you have a family, you're fired.”

“Once I have a family, I'll quit.”

But so far, they'd had no luck. Sometimes she had the superstitious fear that she and Ray were being punished for the affair that had preceded their marriage. The religious atmosphere of Empedocles would have made such thoughts inevitable, even if there hadn't been her brother, Father John Burke, now part of the bureaucracy of the Vatican. He had finished his dissertation and Nate had insisted that they all attend the defense. Nate had been impressed by the concerned cardinals in the audience. John had written an expanded, annotated, and massive development of the rationale with which the then-cardinal Ratzinger had accompanied the publication of the third secret of Fatima. John's dissertation defense had been more a celebration than an ordeal, with all those dignitaries gathered in the Palazzo della Segnatura for the occasion. There had been a standing ovation after the unanimous vote of acceptance was announced.
Summa cum laude.
Nate had wanted to give John a huge dinner afterward, but that had to wait until the following day, as John was taken off by the cardinal who hoped the promising young priest would be named as his successor as acting prefect of the Vatican Library.

“What would be an appropriate gift?” Nate had asked.

“Why don't we ask John?”

The gift had been a magnificent chalice, which Laura helped him pick out in one of the church goods stores along the Via della Conciliazione. John had been reconciled to the extravagance by the thought that the vessel would be used at Mass, and thus was more an honor to Our Lord than to himself.

“Will you be here forever, John?”

She meant the Vatican.

“That's not up to me.”

Several times, he had confided his hope that, his degree won, he could go home and teach in the diocesan seminary or, even better, be assigned to some obscure parish where he could do the work of a priest. Did he imagine becoming an assistant to someone like Father Krucek, the priest with whom he had stayed when he came home during the flap over the missing third secret of Fatima? Laura could imagine her brother made a bishop, then a cardinal, and then . . . But that was absurd.

All such thoughts were pushed away now in the aftermath of the outrage that had been committed at the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

On the flight out, Laura tried unsuccessfully to reach Crosby. Nate wanted him to direct his full attention to the missing Don Ibanez now. Laura was almost impressed by the fact that her boss ranked a missing person above the missing sacred portrait. Ray had commented on the seeming paradox of these two enormously wealthy men, Don Ibanez and Nate Hannan, striving for the simple piety of the peasant.

“Can you buy your way through the Needle's Eye?”

Laura knew the reference was to a gate into Jerusalem, but still the metaphor suggested the literal needle. Imagine that sewing had gone on way back then. She herself had taken up knitting, causing a surge of expectation in Ray.

“What are you knitting?” he asked, his eyes aglitter with potential fatherhood.

“Socks.”

“For whom?”

“My husband.”

“Oh.”

They had stopped talking about her seeming inability to get pregnant. Nate had suggested a novena. That was all right with Ray. “But I want to become a father the old-fashioned way.”

Below her the piebald Midwest was visible through fluffy clouds, a quilt of fertility, breadbasket of the nation, and more and more of the world, and it had other labels besides. Flyover country. How easily one became used to flitting about the world in a private plane, free of all the fuss of commercial travel, the security checks, the delays. And she could use her cell phone during the flight.

They had passed over the Rockies when Ray called and told her Crosby was on the line.

“I'm told you're on your way,” Crosby said.

“You're in California?”

“I could meet you. You're coming in to Oakland?”

“Yes. I want to be with Clare Ibanez. Any news about her father?”

“Maybe. I'll tell you when you get here.”

Jack Smiley, the pilot, gave her an ETA and she passed it on to Crosby.

They went out over the Pacific before coming into the Oakland airport where, having landed, they taxied to the area reserved for private aviation. Crosby came out of the building as Laura crossed to it. On the drive up to the Napa Valley, he told her that Miguel Arroyo had been taken in for questioning.

“Miguel Arroyo!”

“He had been up there to see the daughter. Apparently they met in a Catholic Worker house in Palo Alto.”

Laura knew all about the house in Palo Alto, and of Clare's unhappy love for George Worth. But Miguel Arroyo?

When they arrived, Laura was told that Senorita Ibanez was in the basilica. The reference was to the replica visible from the back of the huge hacienda.

“I'll talk to her first alone,” she told Crosby and he gave her a little salute in reply.

The circular church was empty except for Clare, sitting immobile in a back pew, eyes closed, a rosary running through her fingers. Laura sat beside her. The girl turned, surprised, and then threw herself into Laura's arms and wept. What do you say to a girl whose father is missing? After ten minutes, they rose and went outside. There was a bench flanked by beds of lush flowers Laura could never have identified.

“What's this about Miguel Arroyo?”

“Laura, I had to tell them. He was here. He said he had to see my father. I left them alone and then I saw my father's car go down the drive.”

“Was he alone?”

“Miguel was with him, I'm sure. Oh, how I hate tinted windows. But I had driven Miguel here after we met in town.”

“Did he say why he wanted to see your father?”

“Laura, it must have been a ruse. Oh, what a fool I am. My father could not abide Miguel and his bellicose approach.”

The search for Don Ibanez's car had been unsuccessful. And Miguel Arroyo had been found in the headquarters of Justicia y Paz in Los Angeles. He expressed angry surprise that he should be accused of such a thing. Yes, he had talked with the venerable Don Ibanez.

“What about?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Laura,” Clare said, “he had no way to get to town. I drove him here.”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“Yes.”

Confronted with this, Arroyo said that Don Ibanez had taken him to Pinata where he had left his van.

Crosby came across the lawn to the bench and all this had to be told again.

At the end of the day, Clare had agreed with the greatest reluctance to go back to helping Jason Phelps, anything to distract herself.

“Can you stay, Laura?”

“I will if you want me to.”

“Please.”

The following morning they went together to Jason Phelps's place.

Theophilus Grady had commanded his Rough Riders from a two-story building just south of Santa Barbara, within earshot of the audible roar of Highway 101. The building, like the camps along the border, was abandoned now. Traeger sat in his parked car in the empty lot wondering what else he had expected. After the El Paso news conference, there had been nothing but silence from the man who had precipitated the crisis. Casualties along the border were mounting, and the ca-balleros who, aroused by Miguel Arroyo, had been harassing the Minutemen defending the border now found themselves under fire from bands of volunteers who had entered the fray. Where the hell it would all end was a good question.

Meanwhile the rosary crusade for the return of the sacred portrait gathered force and spread throughout the nation. The networks and cable news shows had covered this with surprising tolerance. Just for laughs, Traeger got out of the car and walked to the entrance of the building. The door was open and a little gray-haired lady peered at him over the reception desk.

“No one's here.”

“Aren't you someone?”

She displayed the tips of her denture. “I'm just minding the store.”

Her name was Gladys Stone, according to the plastic plate on the counter.

“I'd like to leave a message.”

“I told you, no one is here.” Another display of denture. “Other than myself.”

“Tell them Traeger was here. Vincent Traeger.”

“Tell who?”

“The people who aren't here. Grady will do. We're old friends.”

“You're not so old.”

Good Lord, she had become coquettish. Traeger would have had to be a lot older than he was to respond to Granny's come-on.

He wrote his name, handed her the slip, and headed for the door.

“How can he get in touch?” Gladys called after him.

Aha. He turned and went back to the desk. Would Marilyn Monroe look like Gladys if she had lived? He took the slip and wrote his cell phone number on it.