Let the Dead Bury the Dead

by David Carlson

  “Oh, I know about festivals. My home parish was the same way. We’d open up the parking lot for gyros, baklava, and dancing and charge people from the city twenty dollars apiece. Everyone in the parish worked their fingers to the bone, but afterwards we could afford to fix the leaky roof.”

  “It’s a huge deal at St. Cosmas. God help the parish if that weekend is rained out. And yelling and screaming? I can say that because even though I work here, I’m not part of the parish.”

  “Really? Do you attend elsewhere, Mrs. Hazelton?”

  “Methodist all my life, Father. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

  “Not at all. I suspect it might be the best thing in a parish like this.”

  “I like to think so. I hear all the stories, but who am I going to tell? Widowed, you see, so I only tell my cat.”

  “Any stories I should know about?” Father Fortis asked.

  The secretary crossed her arms over her slight frame. “No, I don’t think so. You should start fresh here, Father. Besides, most of what I hear is just gossip. Of course, if there’s something specific that you’ve heard, I might have a thought or two about that.”

  He leaned back in the chair and pulled at his beard. “I confess I am a bit curious about this business of the church moving.”

  “Oh, that. Well,” she said, adjusting her glasses, “I think there’s been a truce on that for a few months.”

  “Meaning it was a war before that?”

  “I’m not Greek, Father, and I don’t mean to offend,” she said.

  “I take your point, and no offense taken. Lots of yelling on that too, I suspect.”

  “Of course. Within the council as well as the congregation, from what I understand. But then there was that embarrassing piece in the paper.”

  “Oh? What was that?”

  “Well,” she said in a whisper, “it seems that someone sent a flyer out to the entire parish asking members to consider buying the homes in this neighborhood. Or at least on the west side of St. Cosmas.”

  “Why there?”

  “The projects are only five blocks over that way,” she said with a dramatic sweep of her arm as if they had a clear view. “The article claimed some members were trying to create a buffer zone.”

  “I see. And that was sent out by someone who doesn’t want the church to move.”

  “Of course, but how did they get our mailing list, Father?”

  “Ah, yes, that is interesting. Someone on the parish council, perhaps?”

  “That, or someone who served on it recently. It was a very up-to-date list.”

  “And what did Father Spiro say?”

  “Privately—I mean, in this room—he was livid. He said it made the church look racist.”

  “You’ll have to explain that to me, Mrs. Hazelton.”

  “Call me Bernice, Father. You see, if people in the parish bought up the homes around the church, then no more projects could move in.”

  “Yes, indeed. That does sound a bit racist.”

  “Folks over in Suffolk were pretty mad, which hurt the parish.”

  Father Fortis sat back in his chair. “How?”

  “It all goes back to the festival, Father. Parishioners do the cooking and baking, but who do you think they hire to do the nasty jobs, like clean-up of the grounds?”

  He smiled and shook his head in wonder. “You are a wealth of information, Bernice.”

  The secretary glowed. “Just so you don’t take me for a gossip.”

  He raised his hands in protest, as if it was the furthest thought from his mind. “Not in the least.”

  The phone rang out in Mrs. Hazelton’s office, causing her to scamper through the door. In a moment, his own phone buzzed. “Dr. Pappas’ office for you, Father.”

  He pushed a button and heard a female voice say from the other end of the line. “Father Fortis, please.”

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “One moment, please.”

  The tune “Guantanamera” barely got through the first bars when the music suddenly stopped. “Father Fortis?”

  “Yes. Is that you, Doctor?”

  “Listen, Father, I thought of something this morning, right in the middle of surgery, in fact. You might want to pass it along to your policeman friend.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It’s like this. I wasn’t Father Spiro’s physician of record, but I have the name of someone who knew his medical condition pretty well. Maybe better than anyone. I’m talking about Maria Siametes, a nurse from the parish who happened to be the best friend of Father Spiro’s deceased wife. They were from the same village, I believe. Anyway, she told me she brought a hot meal to him once a week and checked to make sure he’d been taking his medications. She looked after him, you might say. I thought you might want to talk to her.”

  Father Fortis read between the lines. A widowed priest was prohibited by canon law from remarrying, but there was usually some woman in the parish who watched over him. “I see your point,” Father Fortis said. “Where can she be reached?”

  “Ah, good question. Let me think. I believe she stays with Athena Portis, out in Grosse Pointe. She’s Athena’s private nurse. I’d try there.”

  Father Fortis hung up and asked Mrs. Hazelton to try to reach Worthy at his office. The cardiologist seemed to be one of the real powers on the parish council, no matter what office he held officially. Hadn’t others on the council tended to give way to his comments at yesterday’s meeting?

  When Mrs. Hazelton buzzed, he told Worthy the doctor’s suggestion.

  “Grosse Pointe, huh? You have time to go out there with me, Nick?”

  “I’m trying to figure out the parish finances. Besides, you don’t need me, my friend.”

  “Think about it, Nick. You said she was from the priest’s village. What if she doesn’t speak English? I mean, what if I can’t understand her?”

  “I said she was from his wife’s village, but I take your point.”

  “Besides, you could probably use some time away from the church. Trust me. From my days growing up in a parsonage, I can assure you that church finances are always a mess.”

  “You can stop now, Christopher. You’ve made the sale.”

  It was in fact a beautiful ride and a welcome relief from St. Cosmas. The more he felt the stresses of the parish, the more he wondered how Father Spiro had coped with the job. Even the hour set aside that morning for his private prayers before hearing confessions had done little to raise his spirits. The three older members who’d come to speak with him had mainly complained of feeling unloved by family members or burdened by health worries.

  He rolled down the window and took a deep breath of winter air. Having grown up in Baltimore, he’d hoped to smell a salt breeze, but then he remembered that the Great Lakes were freshwater. Out in the bay, he could see the portable shacks of people ice-fishing. On the other side of the road, mansions peeked out from behind iron fences and snow-covered spruce and pine. “Quite a neighborhood, my friend.”

  “Not where homicide usually takes me, Nick. I think I’ve been up here only once, when Susan and I were invited to a cocktail party at the superintendent’s home. Once was enough.”

  Father Fortis gazed at the addresses flying by and checked the number on the note in his lap. “It’s hard to believe people who live in these places have the same kind of problems we do.”

  “Do they? I can think of a number of problems I wouldn’t have with this kind of money.”

  “But can you imagine the other problems they have because of it? No, my friend, the people hiding behind these walls are usually the only ones who know the truth.”

  Worthy looked over and gave the priest a puzzled look.

  “I’m talking about the fact that these people are usually far unhappier than the rest of us who envy them.”

  “Yet we envy them, nonetheless.”

  “Indeed we do, Christopher. Jesus said you cannot serve both God and mammon. But every one of us b
elieves we’d be the exception.”

  Worthy looked out at the frozen bay. “I heard my dad preach on that, at least once a year. But I also saw how he counted the pennies. Ministers don’t have a lot of mammon to tempt them.”

  “Nor monks, but greed knows no social class. We had to drop our cable TV contract at the monastery, you know, because of that. People said it wasn’t good for us to see so much sex, but the sex wasn’t the problem. It was the commercials. Life’s a race. Don’t be left behind. All those reminders of discontent made us irritable. We began to resent the retreatants, especially the ones who drove up in the big cars. And then we noticed we were having these silly disagreements among ourselves about wanting more recognition.”

  “And cutting off cable solved that?”

  “ ‘Solved’ is probably too strong a word. But yes, it helped, especially when we began to watch more PBS. It was as if a fog cleared, and we remembered the vows we’d taken.” He rechecked the address on the sheet of paper in his lap and pointed to an open gate. “There’s the place.”

  They drove through two pillars and down a winding driveway. Gardens with cypresses and replica classical statuary greeted them and led them toward a cluster of buildings, all in white stucco.

  When the car drew to a halt, Father Fortis undid his seatbelt with a sigh of relief and took a deep breath. “Take away the snow and cold and just leave this architecture, and we could be in Greece. I wonder what Mr. Portis did in his life to get all this.” He pulled himself out of the front seat and looked back through the cypresses to the frozen lake. “My guess is he started in this country like they all did, washing pots and pans in some uncle’s restaurant or shining shoes until he could get on his feet. Greek men dream big, like this place, and they work like dogs to get that dream. Of course, they also tend to die in their sixties. And here we see what Mr. Portis left his widow—cypresses and a view of a body of water, a scene she saw for free back in the old country.”

  “You’re starting to depress me, Nick. You need to get back to that monastery.”

  “Do me a favor, and tell the metropolitan that.”

  A housekeeper answered the bell and ushered them into a vestibule, which stood at the foot of a massive staircase made of honey-colored wood. Father Fortis followed Worthy as they were shown into a parlor overlooking the lake.

  The two had barely sat down when a woman in starched white walked into the room. The slender, black-haired woman in her late fifties or early sixties introduced herself as Mrs. Siametes, gave Worthy a slight bow, and kissed Father Fortis’ hand. She said something in Greek to the priest.

  “Christopher, Mrs. Siametes tells me her employer would like to welcome me personally. I’ll be just a minute. Enjoy the view.”

  Mrs. Siametes led Father Fortis down a hallway lined with paintings of Greek villages and into a small dark room. Two kneelers fronted onto a table covered with icons. Candles gave off small circles of light in the chapel, nearly obscuring the old woman in the wheelchair. When he sat down in the chair next to her, the old woman struggled to kiss his hand. He noticed half of her body was motionless.

  “Mrs. Portis and I are from the same village in Crete,” Mrs. Siametes said in a halting voice.

  The old woman nodded vigorously.

  “I knew that you and presbytera, the priest’s wife, were,” Father Fortis said, “but I didn’t know about Mrs. Portis.”

  “Just the three of us in all of Detroit from our small village in Greece. When I first came, Mrs. Portis found me work in a hospital, but I couldn’t do the English very good. So I took care of the old people at church. Now I take care of her.”

  “Would she like me to say a prayer?” he asked.

  The pressure of the old woman’s hand on his was her answer.

  “She can hear you, but she cannot talk since the stroke,” Mrs. Siametes explained.

  He offered a prayer and looked up to see Mrs. Portis, with her one good hand, following him as he made the sign of the cross over her.

  “She’ll be okay in here,” Mrs. Siametes said. “She spends most of her day in front of the icons.”

  “She prays for Father Spiro?”

  Mrs. Siametes shook her head quickly and escorted him from the room. “She doesn’t know what happened,” she whispered. “She thinks he’s gone back to Greece. I know I should tell her the truth, but it would kill her. And she doesn’t have much time left.”

  “You did the right thing, my dear,” Father Fortis said.

  Back in the parlor, Father Fortis sat down while Mrs. Siametes remained standing.

  “Dr. Pappas told us you would be the one to ask about Father Spiro’s health, my dear.”

  “The doctor is a brilliant man. His family is from Athens, not Crete. Many of those on the council are from Athens or Thessaloniki. Big city people. They do well here.” She paused, then said, “I’ve made some coffee and cookies. My Kourabiedes are famous, Father.”

  “Greek butter cookies, my friend,” he explained to Worthy. “I don’t see how we can refuse.”

  She returned with a tray. She poured a small cup and handed it to Father Fortis, then did the same for Worthy. Father Fortis noticed the woman had brought an old cracked cup for herself.

  “These are delicious, my dear. I’ve been losing weight in this city, but these should keep me from being blown away into the lake.”

  Mrs. Siametes smiled broadly as she took one of her own cookies, but then her face sobered. “I took care of presbytera, Father Spiro’s wife,” she said. “It was a very long, slow death. That kind of cancer is so awful.”

  “When was that?” Father Fortis asked.

  “Six years ago, I think.”

  “And I understand you looked in on Father Spiro after she died.”

  “He didn’t take care of himself. I even did his laundry out here.”

  “Can you tell us about his mental capabilities toward the end?” Worthy asked. “Could he perhaps have had the beginning of Alzheimer’s?”

  Mrs. Siametes shook her head. “No, not that. Some people in the parish told me that’s what he had, but that was just gossip. They wanted him out.”

  “But he was having problems of some sort,” Worthy prompted.

  “He was under a great strain,” she said hurriedly.

  A second vote for Rabbi Milkin’s perspective, Father Fortis thought. “Would you have any idea what those burdens were, my dear?”

  Mrs. Siametes put down her cup and offered a simple “no.”

  “You never asked him?”

  “Yes, of course. I said, ‘What’s the matter, Father?’ I could see he was losing weight, and his hair was thinning. But he only smiled at me. He said being a priest is always hard, but being an old priest is even harder. I asked him what he meant. He shook his head and said it would all be settled soon.”

  “But you do know about his faltering during the service on his last Sunday?” Worthy pressed.

  “I was there. I saw it.” She looked down at her hands. “It was like he was hit by something. No, that’s not the way to say it.” She looked up pleadingly at Father Fortis.

  “Like he was struck by something?” he suggested.

  “Yes, that’s the word. He stopped, maybe for a minute. We were worried, but I know for a fact he had no spell.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Worthy asked.

  “I work with old people. When they forget their words, they start over. It’s like they drop something. Back they go to pick it up before they go on. I see this all the time.”

  “And Father Spiro?” Father Fortis asked.

  “He picked up where he left off,” Mrs. Siametes said.

  “In mid-sentence?” Father Fortis asked.

  “Yes, yes, that is what I mean.”

  Father Fortis considered the nurse’s point. This was new. But was the nurse right?

  “I saw his eyes. He was like a man thinking about something, like he figured something out. His voice was stronger after that. Do you unde
rstand me, Father?”

  “Yes, my dear, I think I do.” What Father Fortis realized was that people interpreted Father Spiro’s mysterious faltering on the basis of how they already saw him. For most, he was slipping into senility. For a few, he was courageously bearing a burden, maybe figuring something out.

  So what, Father Spiro, really happened that morning?

  Chapter Eight

  After two days of searching fruitlessly for the missing book at both the church and Father Spiro’s home, Worthy awoke on Thursday morning with Henderson on his mind. That should have been a warning. But over breakfast, he thought the day looked bright with promise. He thought he finally understood why Henderson always avoided St. Cosmas. Driving back from visiting Mrs. Portis and Mrs. Siametes, Father Fortis had told him about the church’s real estate campaign the year before. The crazy notion to create a buffer between Suffolk and the church brought back something Henderson had said at the restaurant about having relatives in Suffolk. No wonder he wanted nothing to do with St. Cosmas.

  Once Worthy got that out in the open and explained how Father Spiro had nixed the whole idea, maybe he could bring Henderson into the loop of developments at St. Cosmas. As even that parish council member had observed, it was looking more like there were two completely separate investigations going on. And other than setting up another interview with Carl Bales and talking with contacts over at Suffolk projects, Henderson’s activities were unknown.

  But that was Henderson’s problem, not his. With Mrs. Siametes’ input, Worthy was more certain than ever that Father Spiro’s mind wasn’t slipping, but actively engaged in dealing with something worrisome. Rabbi Milkin’s bizarre testimony had supported that, and Mr. Bagios’ photo could be viewed as supporting that interpretation as well.

  The two clues still tantalizing Worthy remained the missing book and the faltering in the liturgy. Now Mrs. Siametes had given him the prospect that Father Spiro had understood something in that bizarre moment. If that were true, how likely was it that his death two days later was a coincidence?

  Worthy figured that the clues of the faltering in the service and the missing book should be enough to bring Henderson back to St. Cosmas. So today, after Henderson finally conducted the interview with Bales, the two would have time to compare notes. Maybe then they could finally begin to work together, whether that meant at St. Cosmas or at Suffolk.