Undertaking Irene

by Pamela Burford

  Just the mention of Irene’s presumed killer made my stomach clench. I shrugged. I’d intended to get Dom to play bodyguard while I transferred the vehicles to Patrick. I’d be damned if I’d ask my ex for a favor now.

  Martin strode past the Porsche, lifted a handcart off a wall bracket, and positioned it near the station wagon’s trunk. “So do you believe that about O’Rourke?” he asked.

  “He certainly had motive,” I said, distracted by the sight of Martin lifting the box of books as if it were filled with feathers and setting it on the cart’s base. The curious look he gave me focused my mind. “Wait,” I said, “what are you talking about?”

  He leaned on the cart. “I’m talking about Patrick O’Rourke and Nina Wallace engaging in illicit acts of sexual congress outside the bonds of holy matrimony, but gosh, your story sounds a lot more interesting. Motive for what?”

  I started pulling smaller items out of the backseat. “Where did you hear that about Patrick and Nina?”

  “Motive for what?” He stacked another heavy box on the cart.

  Stall. Think. “I mean, I heard she was having an affair,” I said, “but not who she was having it with.”

  His smile was wry as he dragged another carton from the trunk. “I know you’re not talking about his motive for sleeping with a good-looking woman, never mind that this particular babe is a certifiable bitch on wheels.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I gathered an armload of shoeboxes, precariously balanced. “Men and their built-in excuse. ‘My testosterone made me do it.’ Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Marriage vows?”

  “Motive for what?” He hefted the last box into place and stood staring at me, awaiting an answer.

  “Congratulations on winning the tournament, by the way,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re not driving that gorgeous Mercedes today.” That had sent shock waves through the snooty town: Arthur and Anne McAuliffe’s bastard grandson, not just entering the tournament but walking away with the top prize. As little use as I had for Martin, I couldn’t suppress a frisson of glee at his triumph.

  I stepped around him and led the way through the garage to the house. I took a few steps down the hall to the maid’s room—I really should stop thinking of it as the maid’s room—and set the boxes on the dresser, then turned back to help Martin lift the ponderous cart up the two steps from the garage. As it happened, he didn’t need my help. He’d already pulled it up the first step. The muscles of his back bunched and flexed in the most interesting way as he got the thing up the second step and into the house. He didn’t appear the least bit winded.

  “Um, just put everything in there.” I pointed to the maid’s room. “I’ll sort it out later.”

  He indicated the lettering scrawled in black marker on the cartons. “Most of these go upstairs.” He lifted the top two boxes, filled with books and clothes, and headed in the other direction. I grabbed the shoeboxes and followed him through the kitchen to the foyer, still strewn with papers and files.

  “No, really, you’ve done plenty already. I appreciate it.” Did my ears deceive me? Was I actually thanking Martin McAuliffe for something?

  He glanced over his shoulder as I trailed him up the stairs. “Motive for what?”

  “I don’t believe it’s Patrick,” I said. “Who Nina’s doing it with. I saw them together just last week at Janey’s Place. They acted perfectly normal toward each other. There was none of that, you know, sexual chemistry or whatever.” I’d already learned that Patrick O’Rourke was lousy at hiding his feelings, yet I’d seen nothing revealing in his attitude toward Nina. Then again, the two of them hadn’t really spoken, they’d just exchanged a friendly greeting before Patrick had to get back to work.

  “I have it on good authority.” He entered the master suite and left the carton of clothes in one of the walk-in closets.

  “Whose good authority would that be?” I deposited the shoeboxes next to the carton and followed him to the office at the far end of the hallway.

  “Veronica Sheffield for starters.”

  “Yeah, I noticed you two getting chummy at the tournament,” I said. “She doesn’t seem your type.”

  “Is that right?” He offered a crooked grin. “What’s my type?”

  I wasn’t going to touch that one. “What did Veronica say about Patrick and Nina?”

  “Well, before your ex gave O’Rourke the job at Janey’s Place, he did a lot of handyman work for Nina.” He set the carton of books on the office floor near the bookshelves, which were completely filled.

  I’d have to go through all of Irene’s books and decide which ones to keep. And then there were her clothes and other personal possessions. I would need to research the best charities to donate them to and make time to sort and pack them all. I’d heard of an organization that provided poor women with nice outfits for job interviews. That seemed a good place to start.

  “I knew that Nina and Colette were good friends,” I said. “I didn’t know that Nina had hired her son to do… what? Repairs around the house?”

  He nodded. “Painting. Woodwork. Plumbing. Whatever needed doing. She kept him busy.” He offered a smile full of meaning, which I answered with a disgusted shake of my head. “Of course, now I expect she’ll dump him,” he added.

  “Why?”

  “Guy’s rich now. Fifteen point nine million and change.”

  I was about to ask how he knew the precise amount Irene had left Patrick, before I remembered he’d been all through her private financial records. “Minus the estate taxes,” I said, trying to sound like I knew something he didn’t.

  “Yeah, he’ll lose about seven mil. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for the guy.”

  “Why would his coming into money make Nina want to dump him?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “She already has a rich husband. O’Rourke was her working-class boy toy. Her bad-boy ex-con. The allure of the forbidden and all that.”

  I had a hard time envisioning sixty-year-old Patrick O’Rourke as any kind of boy. “You gossip like an old woman, Padre.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to make conversation,” he said. “We could talk about your ex instead and why you let him molest you in public.”

  “Maybe I liked it.” I crossed my arms and tried to look defiant.

  “Didn’t look that way from where I was standing.”

  “Really?” I said. “I didn’t think you noticed. You were pretty busy chatting up Maia Armstrong.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t talking with her about a catering job?”

  I let my expression ask him how much of an idiot he thought I was.

  “Not that I blame Faso for sneaking a feel,” he said. “It takes moral fortitude to resist an ass as fine as yours. I know.”

  “Oh, here we go.” My BS meter was edging into the red.

  “I almost blew my cover that night at Ahearn’s.” he said, “watching you get up from the kneeler in that tight skirt.”

  Embarrassed heat flooded my cheeks as I recalled ogling the sexy priest’s buns during Colette’s wake. Talk about a mutual-admiration society. Martin gave my jeans-clad derriere a playful smack and strode past me back to the staircase. I caught up with him at the bottom of the steps as he started back up with more boxes.

  “Get all that picked up—” he nodded at the mess of papers on the foyer floor “—before I slip and break my neck.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  I stopped trying to talk him out of helping. Why look a gift hunk in the mouth? The truth was, just the thought of doing all that schlepping by myself exhausted me. I would have waited for the weekend and asked a couple of friends to help, but I’d assumed that moving my meager stash of stuff would be a piece of cake. Yeah, a piece of beefcake, I thought as I watched Martin climb the stairs with his ponderous load.

  With him taking the heavy stuff and me lugging the smaller items, we had the car emptied in twenty minutes. When I held out my hand for the car keys, he answered by getting behind the wheel. H
e once more looked the part of Father Martin, complete with black shirt and collar.

  “There’s more stuff at your place, right?” he said. “Get in. I have to be somewhere, but it can wait.”

  I slid into the passenger seat and buckled my shoulder strap, giving him pointers on how to start, turn, and stop this particular vehicle. Martin pulled around the house and down the cobblestone drive. His nose wrinkled and he eyed the upholstery with suspicion. “What’s that smell?”

  “I decided I’d rather not know.”

  “That works for me,” he said.

  “Take the expressway south to—”

  “I know how to get to your place.”

  My gaze shot to his maddeningly placid profile. “How do you know where I live?”

  “Where you lived,” he corrected. “I know a lot about you, remember?”

  I was determined not to let him get the better of me. The work orders. He knew my address from all those work orders he’d swiped from Irene’s office.

  “Where do you have to be,” I asked, “dressed like that?”

  “A boy needs some secrets.”

  Yeah, right. This boy was all secrets, whereas I appeared to be an open book. The unfairness of it grated on me.

  Our disreputable vehicle drew stares as Martin negotiated the spit-polished side streets of Crystal Harbor. When folks spied a man of the cloth behind the wheel, their expressions of frosty disdain thawed. He rewarded them with pope waves and saintly smiles, while I slid lower in my seat and hid my face. Heck, the padre was still a relative stranger in town, but I knew some of these people.

  Through assertive driving, he managed to shave almost ten minutes off the forty-minute drive, even after swinging through a Burger King drive-through to get us lunch. He entertained himself the whole while by attempting to fill in the blanks inherent in the Death Diva’s provocative yet unexplained statement: He certainly had motive. I tuned out his wild guesses and tuned in the car’s staticky radio, which was permanently stuck on a station that broadcast Caribbean music. I cranked it loud and sang along.

  I refrained from offering local directions once we were off the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway—SOB for short. I assumed Martin would have to ask, despite his boast that he knew the way.

  I waited. He knew the way. He turned onto Mr. F’s weed-choked gravel driveway and parked at the far end, near the detached garage with its sagging roof.

  The small, two-story house had once been white, but over the past aeon or so it had dulled to a grimy gray. Many of the shingles were broken or missing. An abandoned washing machine sat rusting in the compact backyard. Mr. F had placed it there sometime during the Clinton administration, with every intention of repairing it someday. A black cat reclined on the washer, soaking up the early spring sunshine. Several more cats lounged around the yard. Mindy, a yellow, three-legged mutt, chased a squirrel away from the food and water bowls set on the little concrete patio. A pair of fluffy bantam chickens, one gray and one rusty orange, pecked in the scrubby grass near their tumbledown coop.

  I opened the car door. “Welcome to Dogpatch.”

  11

  Father Martin’s Naughty Ramblings

  SB RAN UP to me, barking a greeting. I gave him the obligatory scritches and he ran off to rejoin the menagerie.

  The rest of my belongings were piled in boxes and leaf bags near the wide-open cellar doors. Martin stepped out of the car and opened the trunk, unable to drag his gaze from Sexy Beast and his glamorous new look.

  “I’m going to get him a new sweater as soon as I have time,” I said, “so just shut up.”

  “I didn’t say a thing.” He lifted a leaf bag crammed with my blankets and bed linens, and lobbed it into the trunk.

  “You didn’t have to.” I wedged a box of toiletries next to the bag. “Don’t stare at him like that, you’ll give him a complex.”

  Sexy Beast approached Luba, the orange chicken, and assumed the doggie play stance, chest down and butt high in the air. He gave a sharp Play with me! bark. Luba inspected him with jerky nods, then started pecking at the pink boa fringe of his sweater.

  The side door of the house slammed and Mr. Franckowiak appeared, carrying a partially filled casserole. I estimated his age at somewhere between ninety and a hundred thirty. He hadn’t changed after his morning jog, I noticed. Orange gym shorts showed off his skinny white legs, while a white wife-beater, open bathrobe, and gigantic hearing aid completed the elegant ensemble.

  I made introductions. Martin’s priest getup wasn’t lost on Mr. F. “I got no use for religion,” he declared. “Meaningless mumbo-jumbo designed to keep the proletariat in their place. Read your Karl Marx!”

  “Yes, sir,” Martin said. “I’ll relay your message to the pope.”

  Mr. F shuffled over to the big steel food bowl and shoveled the remains of the casserole into it. The cats made a beeline for it, as did the chickens and Sexy Beast. The animals shoved one another and jockeyed for position. Mindy yawned and scratched her flank. The plump dog didn’t need to compete with the rabble for kitchen scraps. When Mr. F prepared his meals, he always filled two plates. If he got Hamburger Helper and canned peas, with a Fudgsicle for dessert, so did Mindy, who sat on a kitchen chair across from him.

  Martin watched the animals gobble food from the bowl. “What are they eating?”

  “You’re not going to like this,” I warned. “Chicken stroganoff.”

  I saw the instant my words registered, saw his helpless dismay as he watched the two hens attack Mr. F’s leftovers with gusto. “That is so wrong,” he murmured.

  Within fifteen minutes the car was packed and we were back on the road, this time with Sexy Beast on my lap, secured with a safety strap connecting his harness to my seat belt.

  Martin negotiated the side streets of Sandy Cove, shooting irritated looks at the dog. “Does he have to do that?”

  The instant SB gets in a car, he begins to whine—a high-pitched mewling sound from deep in his throat. I’d long ago learned to tune it out.

  “He gets excited in cars.” I stroked SB’s silky, newly detangled ears. “Just ignore it.”

  “How do I ignore something like that?” he demanded. “When’s he going to stop?”

  “When we get there.”

  Martin shook his head and grumbled something I was just as happy I couldn’t make out. He turned onto Route 109, a four-lane leading to the expressway. “You’ll be happy to know I have an answer to the big question of the day,” he said.

  “I neither know nor care what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, sure you do,” he said. “It’s the question you tantalized me with for hours, you coy vixen. As in, What does Patrick O’Rourke have a motive for? Answer: Why, murder, that’s what. Old lady croaks, he rakes in millions. I’d call that motive.” One glance at my face and he crowed, “Yes! I knew it,” prompting an answering howl from Sexy Beast.

  So it had been an educated guess on his part, which my expression had conveniently verified.

  In case you were wondering why I don’t play poker, you have your answer.

  I blew out an exasperated breath, wishing I’d stranded the padre at Mr. F’s and driven myself back to Crystal Harbor.

  He said, “Hard to believe someone despised that old bitch more than I did.”

  “I don’t think he despised her,” I said. “I think he was just… greedy, I guess. Impatient for that inheritance.”

  “Then he knew Irene was leaving her fortune to him?”

  “That’s what Sten said.”

  “Have they arrested him yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Well, maybe. The cops must have questioned him by now. Sten called them this morning after the tox screen came back.”

  “Tox screen?” Martin frowned. “He poisoned her?”

  “You know, I really don’t think we should be talking about—”

  “Sure we should,” he said in a soothing tone. “Tell Father Martin all about it, child. Unbur
den yourself.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Next you’re going to tell me gossip is good for the soul.”

  Oh, what the heck. It would be all over town at the speed of light, if it wasn’t already. So I told Martin about Irene’s unprecedented indigestion and the daily smoothies hand-delivered by Patrick, whose connection to her remained a mystery. I told him about that last smoothie cup and the autopsy and the insecticides.

  He grinned. “I missed seeing you paw through garbage? You should’ve called me to come over.”

  “You would have helped me?” I asked.

  “Hell no, I’d have paid to watch.”

  I chewed back a smile. “How much?”

  “Fifty bucks. American.”

  “Just fifty?” I asked, with mock indignation.

  “A hundred if there was a bikini involved. A little topless action and we could be talking serious bread.”

  I shook my head. “You have no shame, Padre.”

  “I believe this has been established.” He turned onto the entrance ramp to the northbound SOB. The afternoon rush was an hour or so away and traffic was moving well on the six-lane expressway.

  “Patrick didn’t have to do that,” I said.” Kill Irene, I mean. She was in her seventies. She had a heart problem. If he’d just been patient, he could have gotten his inheritance without the risk. Now all he has to look forward to is a life behind bars. I feel so sorry for Barbara and the kids.”

  What would become of Cheyenne now, with her dad in the hoosegow? I tried to reconcile Patrick the murderer with Patrick the concerned father trying to keep his daughter from reliving his mistakes. It was not a good fit.

  I leaned toward Martin’s side of the car, trying in vain to glimpse the speedometer. “You know, we don’t need to set any land speed records. You can let up on the accelerator.”

  “The sooner we get there, the sooner my brain will stop hurting.” He jerked his head toward Sexy Beast, whose incessant whining formed a nerve-jangling duet with the engine of Mr. F’s jalopy as it thunk-thunked through the spin cycle.

  “After I found Irene’s will,” Martin said, “I went all through her papers looking for a connection between her and O’Rourke—besides him being her former friend’s son. Nada. And this was a woman who kept meticulous records. I mean, I found a receipt for golf balls she bought Arthur in 1986. I searched the house, top to bottom. I kept thinking, there’s got to be a clue here somewhere. Drove me crazy. It doesn’t make sense.”