Precious Blood (The Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries)

by Jane Haddam

  “What of what you said?”

  “That Andy wasn’t serious. Theologically or philosophically or morally or however you put it.”

  “What you just described to me sounds very serious,” Gregor said. “In fact, it not only sounds serious, it sounds intelligent. From what I’ve heard about Father Walsh so far, it surprises me.”

  “It would have surprised me, too,” Peg said, “if he’d really meant it. Which he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly pro-life, you know.”

  “You mean Andy Walsh was in favor of abortion?”

  “Oh, no. He wouldn’t have gone that far. That might have gotten him removed from the parish. He just wasn’t anti. It was all part of the fact that he didn’t really believe in sin.”

  Gregor stood up. He had been kneeling for what felt like forever. His bones were beginning to creak. Peg scooted in along the pew and he sat down beside her.

  “This gets stranger and stranger,” he said. “How does a Catholic priest not believe in sin?”

  Peg stretched. “Oh, a lot of Catholics these days don’t really believe in sin. Even some of the ones who think they do. What I’ve been trying to tell you, though, is that with Andy the twitting made sense. He’d find out something really awful about somebody, some hypocritical thing. Andy always got very amused by hypocrites. He’d find out some big temperance person drank himself to sleep at night or one of the chastity-is-everything crusaders was having an affair with her boss and he’d—I don’t know how to put it. He wouldn’t tell, if you see what I mean. He’d never expose anybody, the way some priests would if they found out something like that about someone and they hadn’t heard it in Confession. He wouldn’t demand a confrontation, either. He’d just—twit.”

  “In public?”

  “In his homilies, usually. He was very good at it. After a while you could tell what he was talking about, but you couldn’t figure out who had done it.”

  This, Gregor thought, was the worst thing he’d heard about Andy Walsh yet—the worst in terms of an estimation of the man’s intelligence, at any rate. It was a foolproof formula for getting yourself in trouble and not a bad way to get yourself killed. Peg Monaghan had to be very naive not to realize it.

  He was about to tell her this, or some polite version of it, when he heard a commotion at the back of the church. He turned to look down the center aisle just as a pair of men came in through the double doors from the foyer. They were both very large and very rumpled. They both had thick dark hair that formed heavy fringes around tiny bald spots at the tops of their heads. They were so much alike, it was impossible to tell them apart, except for the fact that one of them was grinning and the other furious.

  Peg had turned around to look, too. It was difficult for her. The bulge kept getting in the way. “It’s them again,” she said. “Except they seem to have switched roles for the moment.”

  “Who’s them?” Gregor thought he already knew.

  “Maveronski and Smith,” Peg said, confirming it. “The detectives. Last time it was Maveronski who looked happy and Smith who looked ready to kill somebody.”

  “Last time meaning after Cheryl Cass was found dead?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “It’s amazing you can tell them apart. They look like twins.”

  “They don’t so much when you get close. Maveronski has real cheekbones under all that fat. Smith is your garden variety pudding WASP.”

  The two men started to come up the center aisle, and Gregor and Peg sat back to watch them pass. Feet thundered on the aisle carpet. A buzzing started among the congregation that was clearly the first frantic wave of hysterical speculation. All chance of avoiding an outbreak of anger or panic in the crowd was now passed. If they had been agents under Gregor’s supervision, he would have canned them both.

  They came up the aisle looking to the left and right, scanning the faces of the congregation. Smith was on their side. He came past them, took in Peg’s belly, and shook his head. On the other side of the aisle, Maveronski had his eyes trained on the WLTL cameraman who had moved up against the side wall to get a better shot at the pacing Cardinal. It was the Cardinal they seemed to be heading for, rather than the body or their colleagues on the altar platform. The Cardinal was the most easily identifiable target.

  They were halfway between Gregor and Peg’s pew and the altar rail when Smith put his hand on Maveronski’s arm and stopped them both. They leaned together and talked, probably in whispers, certainly in tones too low for anyone else to hear. Smith gestured and nodded emphatically. Maveronski shook his head and stuck out his lower lip. Smith let go of his partner’s arm, turned around, and went walking back again toward the rear of the church.

  When he reached Gregor’s pew, he stopped. His smile had disappeared while he studied Gregor’s face. Now it came back again.

  “Gregor Demarkian,” he said, holding out his arms like a stereotypical peasant in a bad movie greeting a long-lost brother. “I did recognize you. You’re just the man I want to see.”

  Gregor managed a smile of his own, while looking behind Smith at the newly emergent Maveronski. Maveronski looked even less happy than he had when he first came in.

  Smith turned to him. “See?” he said. “It is Gregor Demarkian. I told you it was.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the goddamned president of the goddamned United States,” Maveronski said.

  Then he turned, marched to the front of the church, and genuflected in front of the altar.

  [2]

  Peg Morrissey Monaghan had been right. It was possible to tell Smith and Maveronski apart up close, and not only because Maveronski had cheekbones. On the simplest level, there was their coloring. Aside from the dark hair, the two men had no physical tones in common. Maveronski’s face was ruddy, with a tracing of broken blood vessels across his nose. Smith’s was dead pale and entirely unmarked. It showed neither acne scars nor violence met in the course of duty. Beyond that, there was the matter of psychological tone. Maveronski was a pessimist—and would be, Gregor thought, even when he was winning.

  Gregor was sitting on a chair on the altar platform. It was the chair Andy Walsh had sat in while the Old Testament was being read and it was raised just enough off the raised platform to feel like a throne. For a man who did not like to be conspicuous, it was an uncomfortable position, when he had a chance to think of it. He didn’t have a chance to think of it much. Smith had plunked him down here as soon as he’d retrieved him from the pew, and then Smith had started talking. That had been fifteen minutes ago. He had been talking without stop ever since. John Reginald Smith had had a great deal to say.

  Most of what Smith had had to say had to do with “that screwing interfering Cardinal,” for which Gregor thought he probably had cause. What it came down to was that he, Smith, had felt from the very beginning that there was something wrong about Cheryl Cass’s death. The parts didn’t add up to anything that made any sense. If it hadn’t been for Peg Monaghan coming forward to identify the body—and, therefore, bringing the case to the attention of the Cardinal and making it his business at the same time—Smith would have gone on investigating it in his own way. Instead, the Cardinal had turned out to have very definite opinions about what had and had not happened to Cheryl Cass. Maveronski was a good Catholic. The Chief of Homicide was a good Catholic. The Chief of Police was a good Catholic. Even the police commissioner was a good Catholic. None of that would have made any difference if the death of Cheryl Cass had obviously been a murder, but it hadn’t. There had been just enough hogwash lying around to make suicide look likely in the newspaper stories.

  “The trouble with the Cardinal,” Smith was saying now, “is that he doesn’t just want to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants to have it, eat it, digest it, and shit it out. So when you called up asking about Cheryl Cass—”

  “Wait a minute,” Gregor broke in. “I didn’t talk to you on the phone.”

  “You talked to Maveronski. He told me. Special investigator hired
by the Cardinal. Your name sounded familiar, so I went to the Tribune morgue and looked you up. I didn’t find anything so I went to the library. There, I found something. I’ve never met anybody who’s been in People magazine before.”

  “Which case?” Gregor asked resignedly.

  “You mean there’s been more than one? This was a couple of months ago. A story about some people named Hannandale.”

  “Hannaford,” Gregor said.

  “Whatever. That was a smart piece of work. People didn’t make you sound like the kind of guy who could be bought to put a gloss on something.”

  “I can’t be bought at all,” Gregor said. “Believe it or not, I’m not in business. I don’t even have a private investigator’s , license.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “A favor for a friend,” Gregor said. He looked out over the church. Just before he’d sat down in this chair, when Smith was still being quiet enough to let him get a word in edgeways, he had made a suggestion. Now it was being carried out. The two uniformed policemen were stationed at the double doors that led to the foyer. The parishioners were being allowed to file out between them, presenting their driver’s licenses on the way. Since New York State driver’s licenses had pictures on them these days, the operation had a reasonable chance of being foolproof.

  Gregor studied the scene at the door. He was glad to see the uniforms were showing more intelligence than he would have given them credit for. The ancient lady who had been talking to Father Declan Boyd had reached the door, unable to produce a driver’s license she didn’t have. The shorter of the two patrolmen was accepting a crumpled envelope she had pulled out of her purse. Very good, Gregor thought. Nobody but a lunatic could imagine that woman traipsing around this church, distributing nicotine with one hand while she clutched her walker with the other.

  Gregor turned back to John Smith. The man was regarding him indulgently, but he was obviously eager to start talking again. Whether he was just as eager to listen was moot.

  “That was smart, too,” Smith said, nodded toward the door. “Maybe you’re going to live up to your reputation.”

  “You mean maybe I’m going to live up to my publicity in People.”

  “Same difference. I could use a little help around here. I can’t believe the Cardinal would try to turn this one into suicide—”

  “He won’t,” Gregor said. And then he wondered. He didn’t think the Cardinal had thought of suicide yet.

  “—but if he did, I wouldn’t be knocked on my ass. If you know what I mean. The Cardinal does not like scandals.”

  “Scandals,” Gregor repeated, suddenly reminded of something. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten it. It had taken up most of his morning. “Do you know anything about an incident that took place in something called Black Rock Park, maybe twenty years ago?”

  Smith was surprised. “Of course I do. Everybody does. That was bigger around here than the assassination of Kennedy. Either Kennedy.”

  “Some animals were killed,” Gregor prompted.

  “A whole bunch of animals were killed. Five or six, anyway. Had their throats slit and their blood drained. God, there was blood all over the place up there. When we first saw it—I was a rookie patrolman at the time—we thought we had some kind of gang slaughter. You know, whole bunch of people gunned down with a machine gun. Then the lab guys came along and checked, and they didn’t find any human blood at all.”

  “Did you find the carcasses of the animals?”

  “Sure. Dumped in a ravine near Reservation Lake. That’s where we found the lavaliere, too.”

  “What lavaliere?”

  “You know, a lavaliere. One of those necklace things with a little plaque instead of a pendant. Why do you think the Cardinal gets so upset about it all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The lavaliere was from Cathedral Girls’ High. It was one of those prom souvenir things.”

  “Ah,” Gregor said. “All right. Now some things are beginning to make sense.”

  “I’m glad they make sense to you. They don’t make sense to me at all. Why are we talking about Black Rock Park?”

  “Because Andy Walsh was talking about Black Rock Park. This morning. On television. On a talk show conducted by Mr. Barry Field.”

  “That nut case.”

  “Nut case or not, he gave Andy Walsh a forum and this morning Andy Walsh used it to talk about Black Rock Park. This afternoon, Andy Walsh is dead.”

  Smith stuck his hands into the back pockets of his pants. “Maybe,” he said.

  “It’s an avenue of investigation. Isn’t that what you wanted from me? Avenues of investigation.”

  “Partly. But Black Rock Park is a dead end. It happened much too long ago. Even if I knew for certain right this minute who’d been involved in it, I couldn’t do anything about it. After all this time, I couldn’t prove a case.”

  “Maybe having a case proved isn’t what somebody’s worried about. Maybe public exposure is what he’s worried about. Or she.”

  “You mean somebody who was part of it grew up and got respectable and he wouldn’t want anyone to know?” Smith’s face registered increasing interest, then decreasing interest, then no interest at all. He shook his head mournfully. “No. It won’t wash. If you can’t prove it, you can’t expose it.”

  “Of course you can. You can make allegations. You can go to the newspapers. You can—”

  “You can what? Let’s say you get the newspapers to print these allegations of yours. Getting it past the legal department would be a trick, but let’s say you did it. Then what? You could ruin this guy’s career, but you’d probably also ruin your own. You’d be in court in a minute. And you’d lose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe nothing. If you think Andy Walsh got killed because he was threatening to accuse somebody of taking part in that mess in Black Rock Park, I think you can forget it. He’d have ruined himself in the process. Everybody knows the Cardinal’s been trying to get rid of him for years. It’s been all over local TV. The only reason good old Andy would have done something like that is if he really hated somebody.”

  “And good old Andy Walsh didn’t hate anybody,” Gregor sighed.

  “That’s what I heard. Besides, what does all this have to do with Cheryl Cass?”

  Gregor was tired of sitting. He stood up and stretched and looked around the church. It was almost empty now. The last of the parishioners were filing through the double doors. The principals—Peg Monaghan, Judy Eagan, Declan Boyd, Barry Field, and Sister Scholastica—were spread out among the pews, apparently in no mood to talk to each other. Gregor had suggested they be kept behind, and they were being kept. Father Tom Dolan was still at his post beside the chalice.

  Gregor wanted to tell John Smith that Cheryl Cass could have had a lot to do with “all this.” A lavaliere was a woman’s souvenir. She could have been part of what happened in Black Rock Park. She could have hated someone enough to have wanted to expose him. Or her. As far as he knew, things had only really started to go wrong in Colchester after she showed up.

  He didn’t insist, because there were still too many kinks in the theory to make it plausible. Instead, he looked over at the Cardinal and said to John Smith,

  “All right. I’m here. The Cardinal sent for me and I’m just the man you were hoping to find. What do you want me for?”

  This John Smith was definitely interested in. His face positively lit up. “Everything. Everything,” he enthused. “Just think how it’s going to look.”

  “How what’s going to look?”

  “You and me. Together. It’s got everything. The Catholics can’t complain, because you’re the Cardinal’s man. And I can’t complain, because you agree with me. There isn’t a chance in hell Cheryl Cass committed suicide. And the media can’t complain, because you’re famous—”

  “Famous,” Gregor said ominously.

  “I’m going to be able to do anything I want to.
I’m going to be able to investigate this one right. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Wonderful, Gregor thought, was not the word for it. Appalling was the word for it. He’d been hornswaggled again, as his favorite niece would say. Not into the case, of course. He wanted to be into that. It was getting into the newspapers again he wasn’t going to be able to stand.

  So he took a little revenge.

  He didn’t tell John Smith what the Cardinal had said about the consecrated wine.

  And he didn’t tell John Smith about the goat.

  THREE

  [1]

  WHAT JUDY EAGAN HAD told Gregor Demarkian about Andy Walsh was It’s going to be so weird to have him dead. More than six hours later, standing in front of the glass-and-chrome cabinet bar in the living room of her apartment, it suddenly occurred to her that she had spoken the exact truth. It was weird to have Andy dead. What it wasn’t was any of the things it was supposed to be, like painful. She kept thinking she ought to feel something, like grief or revulsion, that would rock her. It would only be natural. She had known Andy Walsh all her life. He was a part of her, even if they had never been close. Or close on any realistic level, at any rate. She seemed to remember that she, like Peg and Kath, had necked and petted and not-quite-gone-all-the-way with Andy, just as she had necked and petted and not-quite-gone-all-the-way with Barry and Tom. That was the kind of thing people did in those days, especially if they were Popular, which Judy Eagan definitely had been. She had been the second most popular girl at Cathedral Girls’ High, after Kath. It always surprised her to think that Kath had grown up to be Sister Scholastica.

  In those days, you picked boyfriends for their status, not their personalities. Andy and Barry and Tom had been at the very head of the most popular clique at Cathedral Boys’ High, so she and Peg and Kath had gone out with them. People said it was because they had all grown up together, but that wasn’t true. For one thing, the rest of them hadn’t “grown up” with Tom the way they had with each other. His family had been more like Cheryl Cass’s than their own, and all through grammar school their mothers had told them to stay away from him. Tom’s mother drank and his father sent one child or the other to the hospital with a broken something every month. They lived in a rented apartment that was never clean. Andy’s mother especially always disliked Tom. When they had all started smoking dope—and parents always knew, no matter how careful children were to hide it—she was sure it was Tom who had gotten them the weed.