Celt and Pepper

by Ralph McInerny

  * * *

  As they drove, Phil Knight recounted to Jimmie Stewart the young woman’s description of the returned husband. It had been told vividly—the ponytail, the open leather jacket, tattoos peeking through the chest hair visible because of the open black shirt, boots.

  “What did he say?”

  “Long time no see.”

  But his very presence was a threat. Martin Kilmartin had announced that they would marry and here was an insuperable obstacle to that, presuming Fritz hadn’t divorced her, but why would he have bothered if she herself had not? How do you divorce someone when you don’t even know where they are? And if they’re gone, what’s the point of divorce? That is how she had rationalized it until Fritz materialized like the bad luck she had never been able to evade for long.

  “Did you tell Kilmartin?” Phil had asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t think it matters. I mean, he hopes it isn’t an impediment because of the way I was married. He is a very devout Catholic.”

  “Maybe he’s right.” Phil had picked up at secondhand much Catholic lore ever since Roger had been converted to Catholicism when he was a graduate student at Princeton.

  * * *

  Phil’s reaction when he met Deirdre for the first time was to make clear it was the last. No sooner was she seated at their table in the University Club then she said with a nervous laugh, “I want you to investigate my husband?”

  “Miss Lacey,” Phil began, intending to be equally abrupt in return.

  “I mean I want you to find out if a man is my husband.”

  That caught his interest of course and over lunch he listened to the saga of the little girl from Minnesota who had run off with a motorcyclist, married him, and then deserted him.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Seven years. Almost eight.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  “Once. In Madison. Twice, counting the other day.”

  “Had he been looking for you?”

  She thought he had, that he had tracked her down. Since her phone and apartment were in her maiden name, it would have been easy enough for him to do that, once he got to South Bend.

  “What else would have brought him to South Bend?”

  “He’s a hockey fan.”

  If there was a sport for which Phil’s enthusiasm was under control it was hockey. Still, the Notre Dame team played a good schedule and a home stand usually delivered first-rate entertainment.

  “Notre Dame hockey?”

  “That’s his story. But he thought Lefty Smith was still coach.”

  “What exactly did he want?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m worried.”

  “Any idea where he’s staying.”

  “Some motel over the Michigan border.”

  Despite the oddity of the case, it was not the sort of thing Phil stirred himself into activity for. Nor did there seem to be any prospect of remuneration sufficient to offset his misgivings.

  “How much do you charge?” she asked, as if reading his throughts.

  “Look, I don’t think I’m the one to do this.”

  “If it’s a matter of money, I can afford it.”

  How much did she think it would cost? Phil was telling her it was not a matter of money, when she interrupted. “I can give you ten thousand dollars now and more later.”

  “And wipe out your savings?”

  “I haven’t told you everything.”

  When she deserted Fritz years ago, she had in her haste grabbed his backpack instead of her own, a mistake she hadn’t realized until she was in the rest room of the bus bearing her away. She opened the backpack—they had bought identical ones—and stared at a sack full of money.

  “Fifty-dollar bills. Hundred-dollar bills. All so new they didn’t even look real.”

  “Where would he have gotten it?”

  “I don’t know. I closed the bag right away and sat there trying to think of ways to get it back to him that wouldn’t tell him which way I was heading. In the end, I just kept it.”

  “How much money was it?”

  She was silent for a moment, her eyes very round. “Over three hundred thousand dollars. I counted it.”

  “I’m surprised it took him so long to find you.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Where is the money now?”

  “In the trunk of my car.”

  “Is there somewhere you can stay, somewhere other than your apartment?”

  She didn’t like the idea, but she saw the wisdom of staying away from her apartment. “He already broke in once to search it, trying not to make a mess, as if I wouldn’t notice.”

  She arranged to stay with Melissa Shaw.

  “Will you take care of the money for me?”

  She apparently had no idea what she was asking him to do. Even to suggest another hiding place was to become her accomplice. By her own admission she had stolen the money from Fritz. Well, she kept it after realizing what she had done. Good Lord, imagine driving around with that kind of money in her car. Suddenly the very implausibility of the car trunk seemed an assurance of safety. He suggested she just leave it where it was for now.

  * * *

  They had arrived at Deirdre’s apartment. Jimmie Stewart had listened to Phil’s account without comment. Now he said, “So why are we coming here?”

  “She only stayed with Melissa one night. She obviously didn’t go to Dublin with Kilmartin.”

  The door of the apartment was slightly ajar and Phil pushed it fully open. Jimmie let Phil go first. Neither felt any impulse to announce their arrival.

  The living room was a mess, the cushions of the couch and chairs slashed open, a coffee table upended. The kitchen was worse, the floor littered with broken china and pots and pans, the cabinet doors standing open, their shelves denuded. The room Deirdre used for a study was a clutter of books that had been swept from the shelves. The monitor of her computer stared blankly at them. But the bedroom was the worst. Rugs, bedding, clothes were everywhere and the mattress cut open.

  “I don’t think he got the money,” Jimmie said.

  Phil took out his notebook, found a page, and read off some numbers. “That’s her licence tag. Would you put out a search for it.”

  “Wasn’t it outside?”

  Phil shook his head.

  4

  The Dixie motel was so named because the highway on which it stood had originally been the historic north/south Dixie Highway. To say the establishment had fallen on evil days might suggest that it had once known a golden period. It had been seedy from the beginning, a jerry-built structure thrown up in the hope of attracting Notre Dame football fans whose elation or despondency after games would blind them to the modesty of their rooms. But this hope had been undercut by the sudden and simultaneous construction of more elegant establishments nearer to campus. Before the building of those new motels and hotels and condominiums, the Dixie could have counted on being packed on football weekends and that would have offset the doldrums that characterized the rest of the year. Its original hopes dashed, the motel had been saved by offering weekly and monthly rates and thus had become home to a clientele whose mobility was episodic and for whom a month or two in the Dixie at its affordable rates had its charms. Pickups were parked by the unit doors. The office was located in a self-standing structure that had the look of a guardhouse. It was in the office, wary behind his messy desk, that Gilbert Plaisance had received Phil Knight on the day after Deirdre had hired him to find Fritz Davis.

  “A private detective,” he said, after studying the licence Phil had shown him.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t have to answer them.”

  Phil ignored that. “Get many cyclists here?”

  “Cyclists!”

  “People on motorcycles.”

  The question had stirred Plaisance from h
is wariness. “You after them?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Plaisance stood and said he would show him. They crossed the parking lot which had been covered with a thin coat rather than retarred and now the cracks and crevices were emerging from disguise. The unit to which Plaisance took him was a sty. The television lay smashed in a corner, broken furniture littered the floor, awful prints hung awry on the walls and there seemed to have been a flood in the bathroom.

  “A fight, one helluva fight. But I only heard of it the following day after they’re gone. People were in the next unit but they were too scared to let me know what was going on.”

  “Cyclists?”

  “Yes.” They walked back to the office. “Weird, weird guys. We get some odd ones here, this isn’t exactly the Marriott, but this bunch were like that Marlon Brando movie, know what I mean?”

  “How did they register?”

  This was embarrassing for Plaisance. He tried various ways of explaining it but every time it came out that he sometimes bilked the owner out of the rent money by not registering everyone who was staying. “I mean, if it’s a week or more, of course, they’re going to sign the book. But there are people who wouldn’t give their right name even if they did register.”

  So Plaisance had supplemented his income by pocketing the rent of some guests. The motorcyclists—there had only been two plus a girl, although Plaisance made it sound like the invasion of Rommel’s desert corps—had paid cash, not getting off their bikes when they stopped by Plaisance’s window. He gave them keys, took their money, put it in his shoe, and had a beer to celebrate the bonus.

  “How you going to explain the wrecked unit?”

  “My story is they threatened me when I demanded they pay first so I let them in.”

  His description of the cyclist who had paid for the room sounded like Fritz Davis. “How about the other guy?”

  “My theory is they fought over the girl.”

  The trio had settled into the unit and Plaisance had settled down with the twelve-pack of warm beer he kept under his desk. He had preferred warm beer from the time he worked in the pasteurizing room of a brewery.

  “You didn’t hear the fight?”

  “Even cold sober I wouldn’t have. That unit could be in the next county it’s so far from the office. I usually stash my guests as far back as possible.” His guests were those whose rent ended up in his shoe.

  After he drove out of the Dixie Motel, Phil called Melissa Shaw in her office on his cell phone. The fact that he was Roger’s brother was enough to make her receptive.

  “Is Deirdre staying with you?”

  “She spent last night in the apartment. At your suggestion, she said.”

  “Did she say she was leaving?”

  Melissa seemed to ponder the significance of the question. “No. She was still in bed when I left.”

  “And did she tell you her problem?”

  “An old flame threatening her.”

  “What’s the number of your apartment?”

  But no one answered when he called there. Deirdre might not want to answer the phone for a number of reasons. He decided to check it out. Most of the things he did on a job were pointless.

  Fifteen minutes later, Phil pulled up to a building identical to that in which he and Roger lived but at the far end of graduate student housing. The car Deirdre had driven out of the University Club parking lot after their lunch was parked in front of the unit.

  The sight of it chased away the apprehension with which he had driven from the Dixie Motel. Fritz had hit the road and Deirdre was safe and sound in Melissa’s apartment. Soon she and Kilmartin would be off for Dublin. He put the car in gear and went home. It was a decision he would come to blame himself for later, after Kilmartin’s body was found and Deirdre was missing.

  * * *

  Roger dismissed Phil’s sense of delinquency. “Phil. If you had rung the door bell no one would have answered and you would have drawn the same conclusion you did when the phone wasn’t answered.”

  “I could have asked Melissa to check out the apartment.”

  This self-recrimination returned when Phil took Jimmie to where Deirdre’s car had been parked. No need to start a search for it if it wasn’t gone. It was parked where he had last seen it, in front of the unit where Melissa lived, although Deirdre had spent only one night there. Jimmie called the police garage but before the vehicle was taken away he had the trunk opened. He and Phil stood side by side when they looked into the trunk. It was empty.

  “You ever see the money?” Jimmie asked.

  “No.”

  “She pay you the ten thousand?”

  “No.”

  “You say the biker’s name was Fritz Davis. We better find him.”

  Jimmie’s suggestion implied that when they found Fritz they would find Deirdre. What wasn’t clear was what any of this had to do with the death of Martin Kilmartin.

  5

  Branigan got most of it from Mrs. Bumstead, the secretary in Celtic Studies. Prudie was indignant because of the way they talked about the man they were looking for.

  “They’re supposed to be so high-minded and fair, but they’re worse than anybody. They’ve got it all figured out that the man Deirdre Lacey was married to did it, and why? Because he wears leather, has a ponytail, and rides a motorcycle.”

  Branigan clucked in sympathy and shook his head. Of course Prudie was thinking of that weird son of hers with the rainbow-colored hair and vacant expression.

  “I guess she just ditched him years ago, but of course he’s the one they talk about. She’s making eyes at every man in sight and one of them says they’re getting married and all along she’s got a husband.”

  “The biker.”

  “She deserts him and he’s the villain.” Prudence Bumstead was the kind of woman who despised other women whenever she had a choice.

  “They give his name?”

  “Fitz something. Wouldn’t that make him Irish?”

  Branigan said nothing but he had no doubt that the man they were looking for was the giant he had run into in Fiametti’s, just across the state line where Branigan went on Sundays when he wanted to drink without having to order a meal to do it. Sunday or not, Branigan got into his work clothes when he went to Fiametti’s. The patrons were from the trailer parks along the highway or the el cheapo motels that catered to itinerant workers. He became aware of a man at the bar staring at him. The man’s belly emerged from the unzipped leather jacket like an airbag that had gone off accidentally. Except that Fritz drove a bike not a car. He came over to Branigan’s table as if to give him a better look at his belly.

  “You work at Notre Dame?”

  Behind the bar, Millie looked away. Had she been trying to impress this giant with the suggestion that she had some high-toned customers?

  “I’m caretaker of one of the buildings.”

  The big man pulled out a chair, twirled it around with one hand and then straddled it, moving close to the edge of the table. A great hand came out and Branigan took it.

  “Fritz. Fritz Davis.”

  Branigan told him his name. He still wasn’t sure whether or not this was someone who had a grudge against the Irish and wanted to take it out on him. But the big guy seemed genuinely interested in what it was like to work on a university campus. Branigan was a little subdued at first, thinking Fritz might want to apply for a job and he couldn’t encourage that. On the other hand, he didn’t want to tell this guy that there was no way he could get a job at Notre Dame. But that wasn’t it either. Branigan ordered a pitcher of beer, Frtiz turned his chair around, lit what didn’t smell like a cigarette, and they settled in. Almost immediately Millie came running over.

  “You can’t smoke that in here,” she hissed, directing the words at Branigan.

  “Sorry about that.” Fritz pinched the roach and dropped it into her shirt pocket. Millie danced back, fanning her shirt, but she was laughing. She made a beeline for the back roo
m to get rid of it.

  “Flanner,” he said, when Fritz asked him the name of his building. Branigan hadn’t gotten this much attention in years. At home they were sick of the stories he brought from campus and not even his wife shared his sense of holding down an important job. Fritz didn’t blink when Branigan told him he was in complete charge of an eleven-story building where he had an office in the basement and a staff of four. The cleaning ladies might not have liked being called his staff, but it was difficult not to rise to the level of Fritz’s admiring curiosity.

  “I’m the one who should envy you,” Branigan said magnanimously. “Hop on a bike and just hit the road.” He shook his head.

  “You ride a bike?”

  “I wouldn’t even dare try.”

  “Dare? Hell, women ride them.”

  His head half-turned to the girl at the bar whose straight blonde hair hung to her tailbone. “People live there, students, is that it?”

  “It used to be a residence hall,” Branigan conceded, “but it’s been turned into offices.”

  “Teachers?”

  “Professors.”

  “And you’re in charge?”

  That’s when Branigan got out the master key and told Fritz that this little baby could get him through any door in the building. The point was that he was trusted. No one worried that he might go into an office and, well, look around or take something.

  “It’s a completely professional arrangement.” He let Fritz look at the key which he had separated from the others on the ring. Millie arrived with the pitcher Fritz had ordered, squeezing between them with a girlish laugh. Fritz slapped her rear end when she headed back to the bar and she laughed some more. Fritz handed Branigan his keys.

  On Monday Branigan got out his keys and had difficulty when he tried to open the door of Prudence Bumstead’s office.