The boy had been expected home from a basketball game at six. By seven his parents were angry he hadn't called. By nine they'd called all of Jerry's friends and the school. By eleven they were frantic. Now, after midnight, they were scared. They'd called the police, who promised they'd do what they could after he'd been gone twenty-four hours. His coach and teachers said he had an uneventful day at school, followed by a normal basketball game: scored ten points, made a couple of great steals. No failing grades, no fights with another kid. Jerry'd been seen walking home by himself on the same path he'd used since third grade. It was a three-quarter-mile stretch, well lit, with no dark spots for lurking attackers. All these years he'd traversed it uneventfully. I remembered years ago he insisted he wasn't a baby and could walk it by himself. His concerned parents had shadowed him for a week. They'd discovered a network of parents who watched the same streets and corners, joined the group, and worried less.
I felt guilty about not telling Glen about Father Clarence's threats. After I got off the phone I called the rectory. I got the damn answering machine. I hoped their parishioners would revolt against the lazy shits and their mechanical approach to crisis.
Scott suggested calling Father Clarence in Manhattan. Directory
assistance found the number listed under the last name and first initial. I dialed and got an answering machine. We debated going in person and decided first thing in the morning would be just as good.
I paced the floor for an hour. Scott does what he does when he's upset. Late as it was, he headed for the gym down on the second floor of the penthouse. After a while I joined him. Together we punished the machines for half an hour.
I wound up curled in a chair in the living room, falling asleep around five. At six he woke me. The alarm had gone off. I had to get to school. He came with me. He'd go straight to Glen's house. I'd join them after picketing, and together we'd confront Clarence.
First thing, I got hold of Kurt and explained the situation to him. He told me to forget the union, asked me if he could do anything. I told him I'd let him know. From Glen's I phoned Frank Murphy, the River's Edge cop. He had no news, promised to push as hard as he could to find Jerry. While Glen and Jeanette went to school to question or requestion Jerry's friends, classmates, and teachers, we drove to the rectory. We didn't see the red Corvette but, being unsure of his habits, stopped anyway, on the off chance Clarence had come in from Manhattan without it.
Two tiny old women in cobbler aprons met us at the door. The one with blue-rinsed hair clutched a mop in her right hand. The one with tightly curled gray hair carried a can of Lysol in her left hand. With some reluctance they agreed to let us in to see the secretary. We found her pacing a luxurious first-floor office: deep, soft, wine-red rugs, leather-backed and cushioned chairs, polished wood, six-foot-by-three-foot desk. Gold-embossed spines of books looked at us from floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
Constance Madison, the secretary, shooed the other two women out and demanded to know what we wanted. As I explained about Jerry being missing and the questions surrounding Father Sebastian's death, she twirled her wedding ring
with long thin fingers. She was gray-haired, with oversized glasses on a sharp pinched nose. Her plain black dress draped the thin figure of a woman in her late fifties. When we asked to speak to Clarence, she told us to get out and slammed the front door after us.
As I started my truck, the little old woman with the blue rinsed hair peeked around the back of the house. She poked her nose furtively in several directions, then gestured frantically for us to come over.
We leaped out of the truck. Our feet left indentations in the recently thawed earth on the side of the house, perhaps a garden in summer. The woman clutched a faded red babushka around her head but wore no coat. She spoke in a crackly old voice. “Quick, follow me.” She led us back into the house. We stopped in a cluttered entryway. Winter coats hung on racks to our left, a row of boots under them. A window in the door let in the winter light. “Harriet,” she whispered.
From the door opposite emerged the other little old woman. They faced us with their arms entwined. We towered at least a foot above them.
“We must be quick, Mildred,” Harriet said.
Mildred gulped. “Yes, if Constance knew we'd talked to you, she'd yell at us again.”
They might have been twins. Mildred had removed her babushka and clutched it in one hand, occasionally dabbing at the side of her face with it.
Harriet patted her tightly curled gray hair and said, “We listened at the door.”
“We usually don't,” Mildred said. “It's rude and none of our business, but we heard you talking about Father Sebastian's death. We couldn't let you leave. He was so wonderful, and Harriet's a baseball fan so she recognized Mr. Carpenter.” She tittered. “You're both such good-looking young men.”
Harriet said, “We want to help. I can tell you Father Clarence isn't here. We don't know where he is, do we?” They looked at each other for confirmation.
Mildred said, “Such a handsome and well-spoken young man.” She sniffed. “At least he doesn't treat us cruelly like that”âshe hesitated, then finishedâ“that beast, Constance.”
Harriet said, “But no one was nicer than Father Sebastian.” They chirped together about his kindness for several moments.
I controlled my growing impatience. “You wanted to see us,” I said.
Eventually Mildred told the story. Ever since Father Sebastian died the rectory had been in chaos. The temporary assistant wanted to change too much. They'd worked there for over twenty-five years together. They would never repeat gossip, but they knew secrets.
They knew all about Clarence's nocturnal comings and goings. “Priests are supposed to stay in the rectory,” Mildred said. “Sometimes he's out every night of the week.”
Harriet arched an eyebrow, “Sometimes for weeks in a row.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“We live over there.” Mildred pointed out the window and across the street. I saw a little rectangular box of dirty red bricks, two front windows, and a screenless front door. A 1951 Packard in mint condition sat in the driveway. “I'm awake very late every night,” she said.
“And I wake up early every day,” Harriet said. “I'm up at five every morning. I see him sneaking in.”
“Maybe he's got an apartment somewhere,” I said.
They gave me pitying looks. “He lies about where he goes,” Mildred said. “We've heard him tell people he slept in the rectory. Nobody knows he leaves except us.”
“Father Sebastian knew,” Harriet amended.
“Yes, such a saint.” Mildred sighed. “He covered up for Father Clarence. Young people make so many foolish mistakes, and Father Sebastian helped him so much.”
“But Father Sebastian knew?” I asked.
Mildred glanced at the door, leaned toward us, and whispered, “Yes, but he didn't approve.”
“They had angry words,” Harriet said. “Father Sebastian didn't approve of his caterwauling all night.”
I asked them when this was.
“About two years ago, soon after Father Clarence arrived,” Mildred said. “Father Clarence had a lot of modern ideas. He'd only talk to people during business hours. He made Father Sebastian get the answering machine. Father Clarence wanted to run the parish like a corporation.”
“No heart or soul,” Harriet said. “No people dropping by just to visit. Everybody had to have appointments.”
“Did the priests quarrel often?” I asked.
“No. Father Sebastian wasn't a fighter. I think he lost his temper that one time in a moment of weakness. He had the flu that week. I remember because I had to make a trip to the old neighborhood in Chicago to get the proper ingredients for an old family cure,” Mildred said.
Harriet smiled. “It always works.”
Mildred continued. “They yelled while he was sick, but I heard Father Sebastian apologize a week later.”
Harriet nodded agreement. “Most of the time they got along very well.”
The nodded their heads in unison at the end of each sentence as a kind of visual punctuation.
Worry about Constance seemingly forgotten, I let them run on about life at the rectory. Most of it was of little use. They did tell us that chancery officials had been crawling all over the rectory for two weeks. For the first few days after Sebastian's death, Clarence had stayed in almost every night.
I asked if we could see Father Sebastian and Father Clarence's rooms.
They exchanged nervous looks, tittered behind their hands, and nodded simultaneous agreement. They took us through the door, with rapid peeks in all directions including behind us, then into the kitchen, down the main hall, and a quick left up a sweeping grand staircase. From the office area on the main
floor came the soft
thwack-thwack
of paper exiting a copying machine.
Upstairs they led us to the left past closed doors, two on the left, three on the right. Harriet fumbled rapidly through a set of keys and unlocked the last door on the right. “Father Clarence's room,” she announced as she led us in. After we entered, Mildred stood guard at the door. Father Clarence obviously didn't believe that cleanliness was next to godliness. Several pairs of sweat socks and a jock strap formed a small mound in front of the closet. A blue dress shirt had strayed several feet from this pile. A heap of bed linen fought with numerous pillows for the right to center stage on the bed.
The dresser had a framed portrait of a family. A young Father Clarence smiled at us along with an older male and female and several teenagers, at a guess his parents, brother, and sister. From the dresser top I took a small heap of mail, all ads and bills.
Suddenly Mildred hissed, “Someone's coming!” She whisked the door shut and joined us.
We held our breaths in the middle of the floor, but the footsteps never approached our door. They faded, returned, moved deliberately down the stairs.
We breathed again and resumed searching. Scott checked the closet. I looked rapidly through the materials in the dresser. In the top drawer rested the largest, most jumbled collection of bikini briefs I'd ever seen. In my quick look through it seemed as if Clarence hadn't duplicated one color or pattern. Nothing incriminating or even remotely interesting jumped out of any of the drawers.
I finished the dresser and began hunting through the bathroom. Toothbrush, aspirin, vitamin C, Centrum multivitamin, two different brands of suntan oil, a jumble of fingernail and toenail clippers. All in all, no hidden passage, stash of illegal drugs, or secret note admitting to murder or kidnapping.
Again at the door, the women repeated their searching looks, concluding with nods to each other, and off we tiptoed down
the way we came, past the stairs and into the first door on our left.
“Sebastian's old room,” Harriet whispered.
The older priest merited a suite. The first room had dark gold wall-to-wall carpeting interrupted only by a rectangle of tiles in front of a fireplace in which sat a neat pile of logs on a grate, but no ash underneathâlack of use or incredible tidiness. Light gold drapes matched the carpet. Brown leather love seats faced each other in front of sliding glass doors that led to a small balcony. We'd taken several steps toward the bedroom when Mildred sounded her warning. This time as we huddled together the door opened. Constance Madison stared angrily. In obedience to her command we marched downstairs. The three of them stayed behind. Downstairs in the kitchen we heard loud shouts from upstairs, the voices making remarkably loud and distinctly unchristian comments back and forth.
While we paused to listen, Father Clarence walked in. He stopped abruptly when he saw us. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
“Jerry's been kidnapped,” I said.
“Your nephew? That's outrageous.” His surprise and shock didn't seem fake. “You think I had something to do with it because of what he said.”
“Cut the crap,” I said. “He didn't lie. He heard something. You're the direct link. We want answers, explanations, and alibis, if you have them.”
We all heard renewed raised voices from upstairs at the same time. We explained, then followed as he hurried through the house and up the stairs. We stood in the doorway while he straightened out the mess. Turned out Mildred and Harriet's last name was Weber. After he'd established a truce he told them we needed to talk.
The Weber sisters managed to trip and chirp over every object in an unhurried trek to the hall. I imagined Constance would keep them from listening at the door.
We sat opposite him on the leather couches. From there I
could see out the sliding-glass double door beyond the balcony to a cloudless day and a few remaining patches of snow on the ground.
He couldn't have done the kidnapping, he said. He'd been with his wife since noon yesterday. It was his day off, and they'd driven to Rockford for shopping. They tried to socialize in distant cities and suburbs to avoid accidental encounters with parishioners.