by Ed Gorman
“Between Dierdre and the Reverend?”
“No. Between Sara and the Reverend.”
“What happened?”
The phone rang. “Wouldn’t you know? I’ll be right back, McCain.”
She went inside. I watched butterflies, bees, horseflies, robins, dogs, cats… that parade of beings we share the planet with even though we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re the only ones who matter to the history of this nowhere little world.
She came back bearing lemonade. Handed it over.
“Boy, this is good,” I said.
She was the picture of the perfect housewife.
Except her lemonade was so sour I felt my cheeks puckering inward and my sinus passages starting to drain. No wonder Deke had made it out of there so fast. He knew what was waiting for him. He poured it out in the sink and fled.
“Homemade,” she said.
“Mmmm,” I said.
“Extra lemons and no sugar,” she said.
“Mmmm,” I said.
But intrepid detective that I am, I carried on with my questions. “You were telling me about the argument between the Reverend and Sara.”
“Oh, right. Well, she just burst in the rectory door one night and ran down the hall and burst into the study where he has his counseling sessions. And started screaming at the Reverend.”
“Was Mrs. Courtney home at the time?”
“No. She was out somewhere. She’s in a lot of clubs and groups. You know how it is for a minister’s wife like that.”
“So what happened inside?”
“Well, the first thing Sara did was to send Dierdre home.”
“Did Dierdre want to go?”
“No. She was yelling at her mother pretty loudly.”
“Could you figure out what they were arguing about?”
“Not really. The Reverend got very angry and told them to keep their voices down. He knew I was somewhere in the house.”
“Did Dierdre leave?”
“Uh-huh. She slammed the front door very hard.”
“How long did Sara stay?”
“Probably another twenty minutes.”
Her phone rang again.
“You’re a popular lady.”
“Oh, yes, I’m thinking of running for president next time.”
“I’d vote for you.”
She glanced at my glass. “You hardly touched your lemonade.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’ll finish it now.”
“I’ll get the phone.”
“I need to leave, anyway. Thanks for talking.”
“My pleasure, McCain.”
I made sure she didn’t see me dump the glass on the far side of the front porch. I set it on the steps and walked to my car.
You always think of burglary as a nighttime occupation.
But I didn’t want to wait for night. Things were starting to come clear to me, at least as far as the relationship between Dierdre and Reverend Courtney were concerned. I wondered what Dierdre must have been looking for when she broke in. I also wondered what else there was to learn about Courtney. The most promising place to look was his office in the rectory.
Church and rectory were built into the side of a piney hill. A tranquil, natural setting.
Anybody who pulled up in a car could be seen, however, from the street that fronted it.
The first thing to do was to walk up to the front door and ring the bell and see if anybody was inside.
I rang. Chimes echoed inside. No response. I knocked. A tabby cat with one injured eye viewed me skeptically from his perch on a low-hanging branch. No response.
I checked the adjacent garage. Empty.
I drove up on top of the hill. A small grocery store sat there. One of the few left, now that the supermarket chains had discovered our little burg. I parked way over on the edge of the gravel drive so the store folks couldn’t see me, went inside and bought a pack of Luckies and a pack of Black Jack gum, and then went back outdoors.
Three pairs of tandem-bike riders went past. I figured them all to be about twelve or thirteen. They were at that group-dating stage when you got to hide the crush you had on a girl by going out with a mixed assortment of equally terrified boys and girls. They went inside the store and got soda pop, the girls much more in control of themselves and the situation than the boys, the boys all seeming younger and more callow than the girls in fact, and then they were on their tandem bikes again and rolling down the hill.
Nobody in the parking lot. Nobody driving by to see me.
I started my hike down the hill. The great thing about pine is the smell. The bad thing about pine is the way it stabs you. There was a vague path that wove its way down to the valley. The trees were thick enough here to cool the temperature by several degrees. I used to play Indian in places like these. I always wanted to be the Indian, never the cowboy, never the cavalry. Indians, at least in movies made by white guys, always knew neat stuff, all about caves and how to track mountain lions and how to communicate with smoke signals and pieces of stone smoothed to shine like mirrors.
Who wouldn’t want to be an Indian?
I was sweaty, piney as a porcupine, and irritable by the time I reached the backyard of the church. At least the grass had been mowed recently and smelled good.
I had my trusty burglary picks with me-taken in trade from a thief I’d managed to keep out of prison-anda good thing, too. This place was locked up tighter than Jimmy Hoffa’s secret bank records. It took me longer to get inside than I’d hoped, thus increasing my chances of being seen. A raccoon sat at the tree line observing me with the kind of wry look only raccoons, of all God’s animals, can summon. He seemed to be under the completely mistaken impression that I was some kind of idiot.
Air-conditioning. I just stood in it and let it cool me, balm me, dry me. All I needed was a glass of Aunt Am’s lemonade.
Courtney had a lot of the Great Books on his shelves. I suspected he’d actually read them. His den was English manor house with fireplace, leather wingback chairs, antiques, and a really first-rate collection of smoking pipes. Not a corncob among them.
Since Cliffie had no doubt searched this office, I felt sure that it was worth searching again. Cliffie could overlook a corpse sprawled across a desk.
I spent a good twenty minutes looking. I went through the desk; I went through the books, making sure they weren’t false fronts hiding a safe or slot behind them; I got down on my hands and knees and made sure the floor was flat, no trap doors, no insets, no safes.
As I was getting up, I realized that I hadn’t checked the in-out tray on his desk. An oversight worthy of Cliffie. I had some luck.
There were four envelopes hand-addressed in a forceful male script. Blue ink. I read them. Letters from Courtney thanking various members of his flock for favors they’d done the church.
There was a letter folded in half, too. I opened it. It wasn’t a letter, though. It was a crude layout for a leaflet.
Why The Jews Favor Kennedy
It was the same creed as always. The Jews wanted to be on the Supreme Court so they could outlaw all the good Christian principles this country was founded on-including letting colored people marry white people (i.e., big black hands soiling virginal white female flesh)-and Kennedy would happily appoint Jews because they would see to it that he was able to serve not just two terms but three or four. The way Fdr did.
There was something else folded into the flyer. A check written on the personal account of Reverend Courtney and made out personally to Parnell, the printer. No businesses were named.
Looked completely and unsuspiciously like a personal transaction.
“He wasn’t very fond of either Jews or Catholics,” she said from the doorway. “But then we all have our little failings, don’t we, Mr.
McCain?”
She would have made a good cover model for Manhunt detective magazine just then, a fashionably dressed widow holding a silver-plated. 45 in a black-gloved hand, a veil covering the
cold, attractive face. A Raymond Chandler wet dream.
The laugh was pained. “When you came right down to it, he wasn’t all that crazy about Protestants, either. But he came from five generations of ministers, so he bowed to family pressure and went to divinity school.”
“He really believes all that stuff about Jews secretly running the world?”
This time the laugh was bitter. “His one true love-the girl he fell in love with his freshman year in college-fell in love with a Jewish graduate student. He hated Jews ever since.”
“You hate a whole group of people because of one guy? Sounds like he had a few mental problems.”
“More than a few-and that’s probably why he was such a good counselor, which he was. He could identify with the people he helped. He genuinely cared about them.”
“Enough to get one of them pregnant,” I said.
I wanted the satisfaction of seeing what was going on behind the veil. All I could hear in response was a tiny, harsh breath. “Did Sara Hall tell you?”
“No. I just put a few stray pieces of information together. Dierdre broke in here looking for something.”
“It would’ve destroyed him. He started to come undone the last six months-ever since he started sleeping with her. And then when she got pregnant -anyway, she’d written him some very foolish letters. That’s why she broke in here. She wanted them back.”
“And you started drinking again.”
I said it without judgment. Merely a statement.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Believe it or not, I still loved him. He had a difficult life. Spiritually, I mean. Good and evil. It was a constant struggle.
He never learned to forgive himself.”
It’s always instructive to hear somebody else talk about a person you don’t like much. How could you both have the same person in mind? A minister who would take advantage of a teenage girl? A man of God who would pay for hate mail and condemn an entire group of people because he lost a girl? How could this possibly be the same man she was describing in terms of a John Donne-ish torment with his demons?
But you know something, it was quite likely that both portraits were true. We’re heroes or villains depending on who’s talking.
“He had one thing, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“A good wife,” I said.
The bitter laugh again. “Oh, yes. Such a good wife that I passed out at a dinner party the night the dean of the divinity school gave a party for his best students. And one time-at his first church assignment-I tripped and fell walking down the aisle to the front of the church. Dead drunk.
And a lot of traffic accidents, Mr.
McCain. Thank the Lord I didn’t hurt anybody. I wake up in cold sweats sometimes, thinking I’ve run over a child-” She was crying now.
I went over and took the gun from her. No bravery on my part. It was pointed at the floor by now anyway. I slipped it into my trouser pocket. She came against me in a rustle of black organdy. She slid her arms around my neck. I eased her hat and veil away and let her weep.
When I felt my groin starting to react automatically to the pressure of her body against mine, I helped her across the floor and eased her down on the couch. I took her pumps off and got a pillow behind her head. There was a bottle of spring water on a small sidebar.
I poured a glass and held it to her lips.
She drank. “Thank you.”
I went over and sat down in one of the leather wing chairs and lit a Lucky.
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“I’ll try to answer them.”
“What was he doing out at Muldaur’s church the night Muldaur died?”
“Muldaur was blackmailing him.”
“What? Are you sure?”
She nodded. Put the back of a hand to her head.
“In my purse outside the door there are some aspirin. I have a terrible headache. Could you get me those, please?”
I got them, lifted her head the way I would have a sick person’s, and put the aspirin on her tongue.
“You’re giving me communion, Mr.
McCain.” She smiled. She was a good-looking woman.
“I guess I missed my calling.”
I went over, rescued my cigarette from the ashtray, and sat down again.
“What did Muldaur have on him?”
“The way I understand it-and this may not be exactly correct-is that Muldaur and one of his friends were out hunting for snakes one afternoon. There’s a small fishing cabin near where they were. The cabin was owned by an old man who belonged to our church. When he passed on, the widow insisted that John take the key to the cabin and use it whenever he liked. He took Dierdre out there several times-he’d gotten very stupid about her, he told me; he said he hadn’t felt lust like this in years-” The smile again, sweet, self-deprecating. “Which isn’t exactly what a wife wants to hear.”
“I don’t imagine.”
“But I didn’t blame him. All the hell I’d put him through with my drinking-we’d quit being lovers a long time ago. Or he had anyway. I was more like his sister or his daughter than his wife-at least as he saw it-somebody he was obligated to take care of. That’s not uncommon among alcoholic spouses. They stick by the alcoholic but the romance goes and rarely ever comes back.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Then, “Could you please tell me a little more about Muldaur?”
“Well, he was a piece of work, wasn’t he? The snakes. And blackmailing people. And sleeping with women in his own congregation.” She caught herself. “I guess except for the snakes, I could be describing my husband, couldn’t I?
That never occurred to me before just now. That my husband and Muldaur were similar in that respect. They were both men of the cloth who’d seriously violated their vows. If Muldaur ever took any vows.”
“Why did your husband have Sara Hall with him that night at Muldaur’s?”
“They were going to talk to Muldaur. We aren’t wealthy. Muldaur was getting $500 a month from my husband and it was breaking us. That’s about what he makes for a monthly income. All our clothes and his fancy cars… they came from a trust fund I inherited. But that’s about gone now. He’d raided our pathetic little savings account to pay Muldaur as it was.”
“What about the sportscar?”
She rolled over on her side, watching me.
“Do you suppose I could have a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
I got a fresh one going the way Robert Ryan would have and carried it, along with an ashtray, over to her. She sat up on an elbow, inhaled deeply.
“He didn’t want me to smoke.”
“It’s not good for you.”
“Yes, I notice you don’t smoke.”
“I’m down to three cartons a day.”
“I’m surprised.”
“About what?”
“Y. I sort of like you. And all the time I thought you were just this grubby little creep that worked for Judge Whitney.”
“I have that right on my business card. Grubby little creep. At your service.”
Another deep inhalation. “What were we talking about?”
“About how your husband could afford a sportscar.”
“A gift from the last church.”
“Ah.”
“They didn’t find out until after we’d left that he’d been seeing three or four of the choir women on the side.”
“I see a pattern here.”
“Oh, it was definitely a pattern. Same as my drinking was-is-a pattern. Life is patterns, Mr. McCain.”
“Yeah, I’ve kinda noticed that.” Then: “You never did tell me what Sara Hall and your husband were doing at Muldaur’s church the night he was killed.”
“They were going to beg him to stop blackmailing my husband. We were running out of money and she was afraid Muldaur would tell somebody about my husband and Dierdre. And then eventually the whole town would know she was
pregnant.”
“They really thought Muldaur would back off?”
“Last-ditch effort.” A long trail of smoke. “As I said, we didn’t have much money left. And Sara was terrified of what Muldaur would do.”
“You know a guy named Bill Oates?”
“No. Why?”
“I saw him arguing with his wife the night Muldaur died. And then I saw him in Muldaur’s trailer very early in the morning later on. Made me curious about his relationship with Viola Muldaur.”
“You think he might have killed Muldaur?”
“He looks like a possibility.”
“Anybody else?”
“Y.”
“Are you kidding?”
She sat up. The leather sofa made a lot of noise.
“Afraid not.”
“Why would I kill my husband?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“And did I also kill Muldaur?”
“Probably. But that’s the trouble I’m having with all this.”
“Do you ever read Nero Wolfe?”
“All the time.”
“You know how he always makes those astonishing leaps of deductive logic?”
“I wish I knew how he did it. The question is-who would have a motive to kill both your husband and Muldaur?”
“Are you saying that you’ve eliminated me?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But why would I have killed Muldaur?”
“Look at the time sequence. Maybe you were so sick of Muldaur blackmailing your husband that you killed him with that poison.”
“That makes sense I suppose-may I mooch another cig, by the way?-but if I killed Muldaur why would I turn around and kill my husband?”
I brought her another cigarette. She lit it from the butt of the one she was finishing.
When I was seated again, I said, “You kill Muldaur. Everything looks good for a day or so.
And then your husband tells you he wants a divorce. Or you find that he’s sleeping with another one of the choir ladies again.
You could have a lot of motives. Especially if you were on the bottle again. Alcoholics aren’t very rational when they’re tipping a few.”
“Very neat. Nero would be proud of you.”
She sure did enjoy cigarettes. She smoked with great erotic enthusiasm. My groin was starting to make itself felt again.