Menteur called the pressroom, and Tetzel answered. “Did you like my latest piece on St. Hilary's, Lyle?”
Menteur asked, “Is Rebecca there?”
“I haven't seen her in days.”
“I'm not surprised.”
“Is she on leave?”
“Tetzel, that woman is a bundle of energy, a model for us all.”
“Rebecca?” Was Menteur talking of the overweight, chain-smoking, man-hating bimbo who occupied the desk next to Tetzel's?
“Check out her story on Menotti. It's already on the Web site.”
“Menotti! But he's part of my assignment.”
“How so?”
“He designed and installed the windows in St. Hilary's, for Christ's sake.”
“Let's not get into motives. The church closing story is dead, Tetzel. Have you seen the new list?”
Tetzel had his own list, but Menteur was already on it. Rebecca came into the pressroom then, and Tetzel said, “I'll pass on your message.” He hung up.
Rebecca was whistling tunelessly as she collapsed into her chair and turned first east, then west. “Any good news about St. Hilary's?”
Tetzel tried to smile knowingly. Was she referring to the list Menteur had mentioned?
“Your stories probably will have a lot to do with getting St. Hilary's off the chopping block.”
Tetzel was astounded. Was Rebecca actually praising him? The woman had been in the grips of professional jealousy since being assigned to the pressroom, eclipsed by the presence of a seasoned and renowned reporter. She knew of the novel he wasn't writing, too, and there was nothing more likely to anger a colleague than the suggestion that one of their own was at work on a novel. Novel. Madeline Schutz. My God, he had to write that up before Rebecca decided to go back to it. From now on he would concentrate on the woman found hanging in Amy Gorman's garage. Rebecca avoided violence, except of the verbal kind.
Tetzel turned and tapped a key, bringing up the
Tribune
's Web site. Rebecca smiled at him from the screen. He turned the monitor so she couldn't see herself.
Rebecca seemed able to see around corners, though. “Is my interview with Angelo Menotti already on the Web site?”
“It's a slack news day.”
Rebecca took umbrage at that, doubtless because she expected him to reciprocate her praise.
He took a deep breath. “Great story.”
“Thank you. I would have thought Menotti would be happy about
the project to make a book of all the stained glass windows he designed.”
“He isn't?”
“He says over his dead body.”
“How old is he?”
“Ancient. You may be right. As long as he's alive the project is dead.”
There was no reason not to read her story about Angelo Menotti, and he did. It was largely big gobs of quotations from the artist, Rebecca confining herself to crisp questions that got the old man going. She should have given him co-billing. My life, as told to Rebecca Farmer. Maybe he would try that technique in his account of his interview with Madeline Schutz. He should have brought a camera with him. Well, maybe not. He wanted to portray her as a phenomenally successful writer, and the setting told against that. Her account of how she had been jobbed out of royalties on the first three hundred thousandâthree hundred thousand!âcopies of each of her chronicles should be shouted from the rooftops.
“Good idea,” Rebecca said when he told her he intended to go on with that story.
Tetzel could reconcile himself to the prolific author because of the way her publisher was shafting her.
“Want to go over to the Jury Room?” Rebecca asked.
“Maybe I'll meet you there later.”
“What are you working on?”
“This last chapter has been giving me trouble.”
“Chapter!”
“Sometimes I wish I had never begun the damned thing, but I'm in the home stretch now.” He sighed a creative sigh. Rebecca muttered something and lumbered from the pressroom, wearing her laurels. Featured on the paper's Web site. He groaned. Scooped
by Rebecca! What now seemed to Tetzel the heart of the series he had been doing on St. Hilary's had been purloined by a crafty colleague. If she hadn't been put up to it by the loathsome Menteur. The editor brooded in his smoke-free office knowing that the courthouse had been exempted from the draconian antismoking ordinance that had been patched together in a smoke-filled room and rushed to a vote when there was a bare quorum in the city council. It would be like Menteur, his mouth full of chewing gum, to send Rebecca down to Peoria to interview the great artist Angelo Menotti. Spite, pure spite. Well, he would show them what real reporting was.
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“What do you know about publishers, Tuttle?”
“What's your next question?”
“Argyle House, ever hear of it?”
“Why would I?”
“I want you to go there with me, as my counsel. There are legal sides to this.”
“Can you afford me?”
“Take it!” came from the outer office. Hazel.
Tuttle shouted back. “Run a Google on Argyle House.”
“I already am.”
A minute later there was the racket of the printer in Hazel's office, and then she bustled in. She was about to toss it on the desk when she was given pause by the mountain of books, papers, briefs, foam containers from Chinese restaurants. She handed the printout to Tetzel.
“I'll read this to you on the drive, Tuttle.”
“Where is it?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Wisconsin!”
“Just across the state line. We'll leave Hazel here if you're worried about the Mann Act.”
Hazel took a playful swing at Tetzel and went rhythmically from the room.
Flying back to Chicago from a lecture in Tucson, Margaret Ward sipped her sorry excuse for a drink and wished she had flown first class. On domestic flights, that hardly seemed worth it, but you did get a decent drink. Drinks, if you wanted them, and after some lecture crowds the plural seemed called for. Good heavens, what was known as the conservative movement! All those complacent people she had just left, residing in the very state Barry Goldwater had represented, yet who seemed to think it was just a matter of hanging on to their money. Not that she herself had the least qualms about prudently increasing the amount that was hers as a Devere. She had been a conservative, a philosophical conservative, an Edmund Burke conservative, long before she gave a thought to money. At first she had fought the love she felt for her husband, Bernard. He had been more of a Devere than she was, of an artistic temperament. All they'd had was five childless years. Only her brother, James, seemed to realize that what August Devere had amassed had to be managed and multiplied, and not just by investment. Devere Inc. had made its money from the coal mines of southern Illinois and was now into various sources of power, the proud owner of several nuclear power plants. How long had it been since a new such plant had been built?
Devere platforms rose above the angry waters of the Gulf, pumping oil from the depths below. Thanks to James, Devere was in the front ranks of those who scoffed at the folly of ethanol, wasting all that corn to produce a fuel that cost more than gasoline. Only in America, America as she had become.
Margaret put her head back, closed her eyes, and thought about Margaret Devere Ward. Know thyself. That sounds so easy, but what is more difficult, really? She knew a priest in New Orleans who always greeted her with “What's it all mean?” Father Boileau seemed to be kidding; you had to know him to know what a serious man he was. Never be serious about serious things? That wasn't it. Has anyone ever become what he set out to be? Until she met Bernard, Margaret had thought seriously about becoming a nun. The only one she had ever told this to was her grandmother.
The old woman, not so old then, had nodded. “It is a temptation.”
“Temptation?”
“Unless you become a Carmelite. Or better still a Carthusian.”
There were no Carthusian convents in the United States. Margaret had visited one, nestled in the foothills of the French Alps, but she had been unable to imagine herself a member of that community. It would have been like emigrating. As for the Carmelites, well, it turned out there were Carmelites and there were Carmelites, and she had met some bad apples. Bad Carmelite apples. It was then that she became aware of what was happening in the Church. It proved to be a detour of more than a decade. She had given up then, referring it all to the Holy Spirit, and had broadened her horizon, encouraged by Michael, who really hadn't the least interest in any of it. Was that why she had loved him?
What an odd thought. Of late, she had been reading a lot about
acedia
âa neglected capital sin. Translating it as sloth didn't begin to capture it. Distaste for spiritual things? Too often now she thought
of her enthusiasms as trivial. Was that a temptation? Finally, at Jane's urging she had gone to Father Dowling.
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“Do you ever get bored, Father?”
“Not when I have visitors like you.”
Margaret smiled. “I'm growing tired of doing what I know are good things to do.”
“Take a vacation.”
“I recently spent months on a freighter. Once I thought I had a religious vocation.”
“Tell me about it.”
She told him about it, she mentioned what her grandmother had said, and she spoke of her books and lectures, and while she did she began to feel ashamed, coming here to whine. She fell silent. “I sound pretty silly, don't I?”
“Your grandmother is a wise woman.”
“All this is a temptation?”
“The slough of despond.”
“Where does that phrase come from.”
“Bunyan.”
“Paul?”
Had she ever seen a priest laugh so heartily?
“Your family may very well save this parish, you know. Bishop Wilenski was quite interested to know that you live in the parish and that August Devere commissioned the stained glass windows by Angelo Menotti.”
“A funny thing. His grandson was a sailor on that freighter I was on.”
“His grandson.”
Margaret smiled. “Our family seems haunted by Angelo Menotti. My mother insists on helping a third-rate art historian just because
he professes an interest in Menotti.” She stood. “I've wasted enough of your time.”
“I'm glad you stopped by.”
He came with her to the door, and when she got into her car and looked back he was still standing there. What a fool he must think she was.
Tuttle suggested taking Peanuts Pianone along, just for the ride, hardly for company.
“Is this his day off?”
“A day like any other.”
As Tuttle had hoped, Peanuts offered to take them in a police cruiser, and he tanked up in the departmental garage before coming for them. He was wearing a uniform. “My suit is at the cleaners.”
Tetzel groaned and got in the backseat, which was separated from the front by wire mesh. Thank God Peanuts hadn't brought a dog. Tuttle almost got the passenger door closed before Peanuts took off. For the first several miles, he used the siren, zipping along, changing lanes, leaning over the wheel, a manic smile on his face. Once he got that out of his system, he turned the siren off and settled into a steady eighty miles an hour. They had turned onto I-94, headed north, before Tuttle solved the mystery of his seat belt.
“Keep your eye out for a McDonald's,” Peanuts told Tuttle.
“I don't suppose there's any Chinese on the highway.”
“South of Beijing,” Tetzel said. It occurred to him that he had
fallen in with fools. What after all was the reason for this trip? The suggestion had been his; he had to take the blame. J. J. Rudolph was Madeline Schutz's editor at Argyle House, and Tetzel had wanted to interview her before running the risk of libel in his story about the exploited author. Imagine showing up with this menagerie. His idea had been to call ahead when they were on the way. Now he just hoped the editor would not be in her office and he could rely on his imagination and the legal department in writing about her.
Before they left Illinois, Peanuts swung off when he saw a McDonald's sign. The drive-through? No way. Tuttle and Peanuts wanted the comfort of the plastic seats that accommodated the average American rear end. Tetzel had often wondered if they sold beer at McDonald's. Now he knew the sorry truth. He settled for a small order of french fries and munched them while his companions did away with several Big Macs and slurped soft drinks from quart-sized containers.
“Want to take something along, Peanuts?” Tuttle asked.
“We'll probably find another.”
“Another?”
Tuttle smiled at Tetzel. “It's his car.”
Well, the taxpayers', anyway.
With the help of the map on Tetzel's iPhone, Peanuts found Argyle House. It turned out to be an old three-story dwelling looking lonely on a large lot that was mainly ground cover, hostas, out of which a tall elm with a narrow yellowing trunk rose and seemed to hold its parasol of yellowing leaves over the roof of the house. The driveway was cracked, and out of the cracks grew dandelions and other hardy weeds. There was no car in evidence, no sign of life anywhere. Peanuts turned into the driveway and advanced slowly toward the garage, which was located at the back of the lot.
“You sure this is it?” he asked, coming to a stop.
Tetzel opened the door and got out, glad to be able to stretch his
limbs. He had been prepared for something modest, but this house made dreams of authorship and publishing seem indictable crimes. Peanuts stayed behind the wheel, but Tuttle scooted around the hood and came up beside Tetzel as he went up the porch steps and creaked his way to the door. A storm door. The blinds on the door and in all the windows were closed. The doorbell did not encourage the thought that it would work. It seemed to have been painted over long ago, when the house was last painted. He tried the knob of the storm door; it turned, he pulled. The inner door was locked.
“It doesn't look like they use the front door much,” Tuttle said, and there was a hint in his voice that Tetzel had taken them a long way to not much.
Tetzel let the storm door bang shut, then followed the porch around the corner of the building where he came in sight of a side door. There was a sign jutting from the wall. ARGYLE HOUSE. Reassured, Tetzel headed for it.
There was a bulging screen door here, a bulb burning dimly in the fixture beside it. The inner door was ajar. When is a door not a door? When it's ajar. Tetzel leaned in. “Hello, hello.”
He followed his voice inside to a small hallway and then up a flight of three stairs leading to the main floor. The onetime dining room of the house was an office of sorts. The woman seated at the desk did not look up.
“I'm Tetzel of the
Fox River Tribune
,” he began, advancing on the desk, then stopped both speaking and moving. He flexed his knees and lowered his body as if to capture the woman's attention. Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be staring at something. What an ugly complexion. “Ma'am?”
Tuttle put a hand on his arm. “Tetzel, she's dead.”
The little lawyer circled the desk and lifted the end of the rope that had been used to ship J. J. Rudolph off to the department of unsolicited bodies.
“Call the police,” Tetzel said as if he had a rope around his throat, too.
“Peanuts?”
Tetzel had his iPhone in his hand, not knowing how it had got there. With an effort he called 911. Ringing and then a mechanical voice, “You must first dial the area code when calling this number.”
“Come on,” Tuttle said. “Let's get out of here.”
Tetzel was on his heels, unthinking, and soon they were on the porch. He looked at Tuttle.
“Did you touch anything else?” Tuttle was asking, rubbing the door handle vigorously with his handkerchief.
“The front doorknob.”
They were cleaning it of telltale prints when the police car turned into the driveway. The two men, one an officer of the court, the other a defender of the people's right to know, froze. They exchanged a look. Tuttle, after a moment, adjusted his tweed hat, bounced down the steps, and hurried off to where Peanuts was talking to a local cop who wondered what a patrol car from Fox River, Illinois, was doing in Kenosha. Composure of a sort returned to Tetzel. He called out, “Officer.”
The cop, who seemed to be enjoying his exchange with Peanuts, turned. Was obesity a requirement for the Kenosha police? The inner man was visible in ripples and rolls all over his uniform.
Tetzel came up to him. “I wasn't sure my call went through. Officer, there is a body in this house.”
The fat little lips seemed to be seeking the right expression. Reflections of Tetzel looked back at him from the sunglasses the officer wore.
“Come on, I'll show you.”
On the way to the house he began writing in his head.
Your reporter is not often the first on the scene of the crime, but today in Kenosha, Wisconsin â¦