There was tension in the pressroom, and Tuttle became an infrequent presence. Tetzel had grown reluctant to pursue the church closings story, since this meant relinquishing the ritual killing of Madeline Schutz to Rebecca, his archrival. Menteur, good chauvinist as he normally was, favored Rebecca if only as a means of putting down Tetzel. Pure jealousy, of course. Menteur was presiding over the decline and fall of the
Tribune
, and there didn't seem to be much that he or the publisher or anyone else could do about it. Menteur had a Luddite's distrust of the paper's Web site, which was getting more hits a day than there were subscribers to the print edition. Only an idiot could ignore the implications of that, and Menteur qualified. The irony was that Tetzel half shared the attitude of his despised boss. Of course he used a computer. Typewriters were as rare as Edsels now. Tetzel had one stashed in his closet among the shoes and had recently taken it out to revive the sense of satisfaction he had felt banging away at it, but it was slow and clumsy, and manually returning the carriage at the end of each line seemed unbelievably primitive. He put it back in the closet. If he had had an Edsel, he would have hung on to it, too, as in investment.
Rebecca sauntered into the pressroom, spun her chair around by
bumping it with her hip, and collapsed. “Madeline Schutz isn't Madeline Schutz.”
Tetzel held up a staying hand, leaning toward the screen of his computer. His head tipped back, his eyes closed, and then, the creature of inspiration, his fingers danced on the keys for a moment and he fell back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. Slowly he turned to Rebecca. “Is there any pleasure keener than finishing a story?”
“Still on the endangered churches story?”
“You wouldn't believe the ramifications. How's the ritual murder going?”
Rebecca replied with words that ladies seldom use. “I told you. The body isn't the body of who they thought it was.”
“It's just as dead, isn't it?”
“Yes, but whose is it?”
“You got anything here or should we go across the street?”
Rebecca got up and hipped the door shut. Returning to her desk, she withdrew a bottle of Johnny Walter Red. Tetzel produced two foam cups, shocking Rebecca. Scotch from a foam cup? She had glasses.
“You're getting fastidious.”
“Even though I eat like a bird.”
He let it go. Where would any of them be without Roget's
Thesaurus
? Or maybe Rebecca's hearing was going. The thought of Rebecca succumbing to the ravages of age, tottering toward the horizon, filled Tetzel with cheer, and he accepted her scotch in the spirit in which it was offered.
“Did you ever hear of the Empyrean Chronicles?”
“Sounds familiar,” Tetzel lied.
“They're written by the real Madeline Schutz. Six in print, the next one already written.”
“Six novels?”
Rebecca nodded while sipping, her eyes brightly on Tetzel. It had been his boast and now it was his shame that he was writing a novel. A novel! On his hard drive, filed under ULYSSES, were various bits and pieces of what he called his novel. Why had he told others about it? What might have been merely a consoling private dream had been turned into a public failure.
“Science fiction. Fantasy.”
Tetzel snorted. “I can't read that sort of thing.”
A sigh of disappointment from Rebecca. “I had hoped you would interview her, Tetzel. One novelist on another, rapport, special insights ⦔
Tetzel watched her narrowly as she spoke. She was setting him up, he was sure of it. Then he wasn't sure. Did he really have status as a novelist with Rebecca? “Tell me about her.”
Listening, Tetzel felt his imagination emerging slowly from disuse. Rebecca and the police were baffled by the apparently random use of the identity of Madeline Schutz for the body hung in the garage. The woman whose house it was, Amy GormanâTetzel was taking notes in a casual wayâhad no connection with the writer in Skokie. Nor had Madeline, the science fiction factory, ever heard of Amy Gorman. There was absolutely no direct link between them.
“A dead end?”
Rebecca nodded. “The police may fiddle around with it a bit longer, but they're going nowhere.”
“They've looked into religious sects?”
Rebecca frowned, then laughed. “Do you know what I thought you asked?”
“Menteur will keep you on it.”
“You're wrong.”
“So why should I interview a novelist who has nothing to do with the story you're dropping?”
“That's your hook, Tetzel.”
Well, they had both been drinking. Rebecca certainly wasn't stingy with her scotch, but maybe she thought offering Tetzel more justified herself having another. He shrugged noncommittally and lifted his glass. “Here's to crime.”
“To hell with crime.”
Tuttle breezed in but at the sight of Rebecca came to a stop. He adjusted his tweed hat. “I got your call,” he said to Tetzel.
“What call?”
“The one you promised to make. You said you'd keep me posted. Hazel is frantic.”
“Who's Hazel?” Rebecca asked.
“Tuttle's mistress.”
There are many kinds of laughter, but Rebecca's disdainful cackle was the only kind she had. She rose, bumped Tuttle aside, and went off down the hall to the ladies' room.
“What's wrong with her?”
“Don't get me started.”
“Ah, the course of true love. Tetzel, a thought. Do a feature on Angelo Menotti, the artist who designed the stained glass windows at St. Hilary's. It turns out the guy's famous. He has a studio in Peoria; we could go together. He has issued a statement.”
“I'm on a special assignment.”
Tuttle took a chair. “Tell me about it.”
Tetzel rose, steadied himself, and assumed a mysterious air. “I wish I could.”
He passed the returning Rebecca in the hallway and gave her a salute.
“Is he still in there?”
“He wants to talk to you.”
Lurching groundward in the elevator, Tetzel coaxed from secrecy the inspiration he had had listening to Rebecca. She and apparently the police were stymied because there was no relation between
Madeline Schutz and Amy Gorman. No direct relation. The solution seemed simple to Tetzel and would have, he was sure, even if his mind had been clear. There had to be a tertium quid, a third person who linked the two. Find that link and voilà !
Meanwhile he would interview the prolific science fiction writer.
Phil Keegan's condo overlooked an artificial lake in the middle of which a fountain sent up a silvery umbrella-shaped spray of water. There were ducks on the lake that residents were warned not to feed, a prohibition surreptitiously ignored. It was the Canada geese that were the problem, wandering along the walks; their strangely designed bodies were not adapted to easy terrestrial travel, yet they were seldom in the water and used their wings infrequently. Phil had been prepared to admire the awkward birds until the management identified them as nuisances. The nature of the nuisance was delicately hinted at, but those who used the walks understood. From time to time a couple with a brace of dogs was called in to scatter the geese, but after a week, they always returned.
Phil sat at the table in his combination kitchen/dining room, holding a mug of coffee with both hands, and thanked God he was not retired. All around him were oldsters, living on pensions and Social Security and whatever else, shuffling along the walks, going nowhere. He almost thanked God that he was not like the rest of men, but the Gospel scene expelled the thought. Not even Father Dowling had seen how shaken he had been by the threat to close
St. Hilary's. If that happened, Roger Dowling would go, and with him one of the mainstays in Phil's life.
It had been ten years since he had sold the house in which he and his wife had raised their two daughters, now living on opposite coasts. As captain of detectives, he worked himself harder than anyone, almost dreading going home. What in God's name would he do if he retired, sit here looking out at the ducks and geese? The pastor of St. Hilary's had become a close friend during these lonely years. Roger had been a couple of classes ahead of him in Quigley, where the then mandatory Latin undid Phil. Eventually, he went into the army, became an MP and, when he got out, went into police work. Several evenings a week he would drop by the St. Hilary's rectory to visit with Roger, watch a game on TV, talk about the crime of the day.
“Hung in a garage?” Father Dowling exclaimed when Phil told him of the murder Cy Horvath and Agnes were investigating.
“Not even her own garage. Nor was she the Madeline Schutz we thought she was.”
Roger liked to be informed of the department's work, although Phil knew they looked on things differently. As a cop, his aim was justice, an arrest, indictment, conviction, and then a long spell in Joliet. Roger Dowling understood that, but his interest was mercy. What for Phil was a crime was a sin for the pastor of St. Hilary's, and his concern was for the soul of the wrongdoer. Not wholly incompatible points of view, of course.
“Who was she?”
“God knows.”
The familiar, comfortable exchange went on, but now there was the disturbing undertow that St. Hilary's might be closed and Roger Dowling reassigned. Phil didn't want to dwell on what this would mean for him, but neither could he rid himself of the thought.
“I told Massimo Bartelli to add my name to the list.”
“I wish he hadn't formed that group, Phil.”
“Do you just want to wait and see what happens?”
“Not quite. But the Church doesn't make her decision on the basis of protests.”
“I hope the cardinal listens to them.”
“We'll see.”
Phil tried to understand Roger's resignation. He would do what the cardinal asked him to do; that was what motivated Roger. Phil agreed that a priest ought to be a good soldier, but still â¦
“You think it's going to happen, don't you?”
“Actually, I doubt it.”
“Have you heard from Bishop Wilenski?”
“Two things impressed him when we talked. That the Deveres are parishioners here and that we have Angelo Menotti stained glass windows in the church.”
“They are nice windows.”
The Deveres. Of course, they were an affluent family, and generous. It turned out that they had donated the Menotti windows, years ago.
“Funny thing, Roger. The woman in whose garage the body was found is staying with Susan Devere.”
“What's the connection?”
Phil thought a moment. “I'd have to ask Cy.”
Years ago when Father Dowling had been taken to the third floor of the Devere mansion for the first time, he had assumed he was bringing the Eucharist to an invalid, but the woman who greeted him with a reverent nod toward the burden he bore looked spry and agile. Jane Devere was neatly dressed, she had a mantilla over her silver-gray hair, and, as Father Dowling approached, she dropped to her knees in a single motion. She received the host devoutly and then withdrew to a prie-dieu under a magnificent picture of the Blessed Virgin, having first waved Father Dowling into the adjoining sunny room, where coffee and rolls awaited him.
A few minutes later, folding her mantilla and setting it aside, she joined him. “I hope you won't think it presumptuous if I welcome you to St. Hilary's, Father.”
“Your family must have been among the original parishioners.”
“I believe we were.”
Once a month or so after that, he brought her communion and they had a little chat over coffee and rolls afterward, but the years passed and Father Dowling did not feel he knew her any better than he had the first time. Until he asked about the picture. “I have always wanted to ask you about the Madonna over your prie-dieu.”
She actually glowed. “Isn't it beautiful?”
“I don't recognize it.”
Her chin dropped to her starched white collar. “You don't think it's a copy, I hope.”
He went closer to examine the canvas. “I can't read the signature.”
“Angelo Menotti.”
With time, Father Dowling's monthly visits to Jane Devere grew, if not lengthy, longer, but their conversations were quite impersonal, even theoretical. She had a keen interest in Marian apparitions and was angry to hear that there were some in the Church who questioned the fact of purgatory.
“Nonsense, Father. Haven't they heard of Fatima?”
“Or Dante?”
Her expression changed. “You're teasing me.”
Amos had prepared Father Dowling for the old woman's interest in the law. “I think she could pass the bar, Father. How she picks up the lore I do not know. Understandably, I suppose, she is particularly interested in trusts and wills and inheritance and all the rest, but I once had an extended conversation with her on the law of copyright, and another on benefactions. She showed me an extraordinary document that had been drawn up when August commissioned the stained glass windows for the church. That was before my time, of course. I mean as the family lawyer. What a sense of contingency that old man had.”
“How so?”
“You will be interested to learn that ownership of those windows reverts to the Deveres in case of, well, there must have been half a dozen possibilities. Jane told me that she herself had insisted on those.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Oh, the conversations I have had with Jane Devere,” Amos said with a dreamy smile.
Father Dowling often envied the old lawyer until he had the uneasy feeling that he might be on the brink of a romantic revelation. After all, both Jane and Amos had lost their spouses.
“I'll give you one example. âTake a case,' she said to me. She always began that way. Well, I was to take the case of a family in which a husband fathered a child by a servant girl, a child whose origins were kept a firm secret. It was adopted into the family, not in any legal sense, but under the pretense that it was the betrayed wife's child. The years pass, and that child has children of its own. They bear the family name, but hovering over them is the shadow of the bar sinister; they derive from a parent who was born on the wrong side of the blanket. Very well, time passes, and somehow the secret is learned. Members of the family whose origins are without blemish take action to disinherit the children of that unfortunate child. What did I think would be the outcome.”
“What an imagination she has. What answer did you give her?”
“As we say at my alma mater, I punted. She continued to press me, and I continued to avoid the question. Thank God I have never been confronted with such a problem.”
Eventually, Jane had put a similar case to Father Dowling as a matter of canon law. Amos had told her of her pastor's doctorate in that subject. This time it was the case of a wife who concealed from her husband the fact that the baby she bore was not his. The secret was retained throughout their marriage; the husband died; children were born of the child that was the wife's but not the husband's. Was illegitimacy transitive? Were the issue of that child conceived in sin tainted with illegitimacy?
“But the child was hers.”
“Granted. She marries into a family and of course bears her husband's name. Her son, too, bears his name. What would be their status, Father?”
He promised to do research on the subject if she really wanted to know.
“I do. I do. Some old women knit or do crossword puzzles or simply say their prayers. Conundra like that are my hobby.”
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“I suppose you hear her confession,” Marie said. The housekeeper was resentful of the claim the Deveres had on the pastor, particularly Jane, whom she had never met. The whole Devere family was a kind of blank in Marie's knowledge of the parish.
“What if she asked me if I heard yours?”
Marie became indignant. “What housekeeper would confess to her own pastor? You know I have a Carmelite confessor.”
“I didn't know.”
“Well, now you do.”
The next time he visited Jane he asked her about confession.
“Oh, Father Felix takes care of that.”
“Father Felix.”
“A Franciscan. He was an assistant here before you came and has continued to serve as my confessor. Surely you didn't think I would receive communion without being in the state of grace.”
“You'll forgive my asking, but it is the kind of thing pastors should know.”
“I am surprised you didn't ask me earlier. What is the latest news from Bishop Wilenski?”
“He tells me that the latest list he has prepared for the cardinal does not include St. Hilary.”
“I'm almost disappointed.”
“You are?”
“I was looking forward to a court battle.”