"She's got the room in the basement. There's a bell you can ring to let her know you're coming down. I can show you where it is."
"Great."
He led me out of the well-lighted kitchen halfway down a hall to a door.
"The basement," he said. Then he pointed to a small aluminum circle. "And the bell."
"Thanks again."
"If you need anything, we'll be in the dining room, which is right down the hall."
I rang the bell twice, opened the door, clipped on the light switch, and went down the stairs.
The basement was big but standard, furnace in one corner, washer and dryer in another, twenty or so cardboard boxes piled up next to the large wooden room built against the east wall. The floor was dry, the walls showing no signs of moisture or mildew. The basement even smelled clean.
Jenny came out of the room's door in a nubby pink terry-cloth robe. She wore no shoes. Her feet were small and cute, like fetching little animals. She was drying her wet hair with a white towel.
"This is a surprise," she said. "A nice one."
"I just wanted to talk to you a little bit."
She looked disappointed. "Oh. I was hoping you'd come to see me. You know, just because you liked me. But it's about Father Daly, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"Well, maybe we could spend a few minutes talking about him, and then spend a few minutes talking about something else."
Her one-room apartment was surprisingly cozy. There was a handsome couch that could be made into a bed at nighttime, a 19" color TV on a stand, a small bookcase packed with Star Trek paperbacks, and one of those portable man-high closets made of pressed wood. The lone table-lamp next to the armchair cast flattering shadows over the room. The one problem was the cigarette smoke lying gray and harsh on the air.
"This is a nice place."
"That's why I don't want Bernice to get me fired."
"I don't think Bernice wants to get you fired."
"I thought you were on my side." Betrayal was strong in her voice.
"I'm not on anybody's side, Jenny. But I don't think Bernice is trying to get you fired."
I saw a brief moment of junkie madness in her eyes, that druggy paranoia that never fails to impress or frighten me. "She got to you, didn't she?"
"I guess I don't know what that means."
"Sure you know what it means, Robert. Told you her side of the story. Made herself out to be this long-suffering saint and me to be this little slut who was always coming on to Father Daly."
"Were you always coming on to Father Daly?"
"I was going to invite you to sit down, Robert. Now I don't think I will."
"Will you answer my question, Jenny? Were you always coming on to Father Daly?"
She sighed. "I wanted to sleep with him. That, I admit. And that was probably wrong. I mean, in a weird way, he really did take his vows seriously." She sighed again and looked me straight in the eye. "I suppose a few times I did come on to him. You want to sit down?"
"Thanks."
I saw down.
"She was jealous - Bernice, I mean."
"I see."
She watched me a moment. "Boy, she really did get to you, didn't she?"
She sat down on the couch. Slowly. Carefully. As if she might fall. She looked pale and tired suddenly. "I thought you and I were going to be friends. You know, really mean something to each other. But now I see—"
She stopped. Tears shone in her eyes.
"But now you see what, Jenny?" I said gently.
"Now I see that you're just like everybody else I've ever known." She put her head back, tears streaming down her cheeks, and placed both of her hands over her heart. It should have been a melodramatic gesture but here, now, there was something pure and child-like and touching about it.
"All my life I've had so much fucking love to give somebody, and nobody would ever take it. Not my mother or father or my sister or my friends at school. I used to think that people knew something about me that I didn't know. You know, they realized that there was something really wrong with me that I couldn't see. I always felt alone. Always. And I'd cry a lot for no reason at all. Just fucking weep. And then when I was fifteen, I discovered junk. And everything was cool then, everything was all right."
She stopped talking, brought her head back down level, and then wiped tears away with a single delicate finger.
"But now I don't have junk to lean on any more, and it's really scary." Then: "You know the funny thing?"
"What?"
"He was a lot like me. Father Daly. The way he loved Ellie Wilson. I think he wanted to give her everything he felt, too. But she wouldn't let him. Personally, I always thought she was just sort of leading him on, that she thought it was kind of flattering to have a priest fall in love with you. Especially a handsome young one like Father Daly. I mean, Monsignor Gray and Father Ryan both warned him about what he was doing but he didn't seem to care. One night he went crazy and started yelling at Father Ryan about something and then another night he shoved Monsignor Gray real hard against the wall."
"Was he drinking?"
"No. But he had a temper. The Monsignor said something to him, something I didn't catch, and that was when Father Daly got so mad."
Then: "Sometimes I think I was happier back in the halfway house."
"That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about."
"Oh?"
"The halfway house."
She said, "You found out, huh?"
"Found out?"
"About that night with the knife."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"I'm not sure I really would've stabbed him. I mean, I really loved him. But he's just like you are — all wrapped up in your own problems, and not the least bit interested in me."
"He dropped the charges."
"That's only because he was afraid of what I was going to tell the police."
"And what was that?"
She sighed. Looked away for a moment.
"That we were having sex."
"I see."
"I mean, not actual screwing. But blow jobs. He was always having me give him blow jobs."
"So he was afraid—"
"He has a wife and two kids. He knew it'd come out in the papers, what we were doing I mean, if he actually went ahead and pressed charges, so—"
"So he didn't press charges."
"Right," she said. Then she smiled tearfully: "I've led a pretty exemplary life, don't you think?"
I smiled. "None of us has led an exemplary life, Jenny."
While she'd been talking so animatedly, her terrycloth robe had gaped, partially exposing her nicely shaped breasts.
She saw where my eyes had strayed and smiled.
"We could make love and they wouldn't hear us."
"I don't think that's such a good idea, Jenny."
"Would you come over here and put your arm around me?"
"I guess I could do that."
So I went over and sat down next to her and put my arm around her. Her hair smelled wet and clean, exhilarating, and her flesh thrummed with youth and sex.
"You think I killed him?" she said.
"It's a possibility."
"Sometimes I think I did. I wanted to. I mean, I really thought about it a lot."
"Did you know he was at the motel room?"
"Sure."
"Sure?"
"Yeah. I used to follow him out there. Whenever he was gone from the rectory very long, I always assumed that's where he went."
It happened so quickly, there was nothing I could do, her arms around me, her tongue in my mouth.
I didn't want to stop it. She was a desirable young woman and my need was suddenly enormous. I felt her soft breasts against my chest. The touch of her wet hair was erotic and overpowering. Then she was guiding my hand down inside her robe —
I pushed away.
Thinking I'd heard something just outside the door.
"No, pl
ease," she said, struggling to keep me in her embrace. There was a frenzy about her now.
I suppose it took me a full minute to get up on my feet and move to the door.
I looked across the basement, then to the steps that angled up the far wall. While I saw nothing, I heard the basement door closing quietly.
I went back to the couch. Her entire body was shaking. I wondered if she was having some kind of seizure. I held her as tightly as I could.
I don't know how long we sat there, it could have been three or four hours the slow sad way the moments ticked by, and then she put her face into my shoulder and began sobbing.
I held her even tighter now.
I thought of some Dylan Thomas lines from one of my college lit courses: "When lovers lie abed/Their arms wrapped round the grief of the ages." She was one of those women whose embrace would always be wrapped round such grief.
Then a voice was calling my name — Steve Gray's. There was a phone call for me. Upstairs. In his study.
Brad Doucette was on the phone.
"Ellie Wilson's been calling here the last half hour. Three times. She really wants to talk to you."
"About what? I was just out there."
"About what? You haven't heard?"
Then he told me.
I hung up. "Do you have Ellie Wilson's number?" I asked Steve.
"What's wrong, Robert?" he said, thumbing through the Rolodex on his desk.
I said, "Detective Holloway just brought Bob Wilson in for questioning. I think Holloway thinks Wilson is the killer."
Chapter Nineteen
The lawyer's name was Harry Solomon. He was generally considered to be Brad Doucette's only serious competition in local criminal law.
He was in the waiting area at the front of the police station trying to calm Ellie Wilson. When I called the number Steve Gray gave me, I'd been transferred to the phone in Ellie's car. She said she'd meet me at the police station.
Harry Solomon was a tall, slightly stooped man with a handsome, even distinguished face, and a shaggy white band of hair around his otherwise bald head. He wore a red windbreaker, chinos and penny-loafers. He recognized me from the times he'd seen me with Brad. He offered a quick, strong hand.
"I was just telling Ellie that Bob would have to spend the night here," Solomon said. "I've already talked to the judge. He's set bail and now it's just a matter of paperwork."
"Where's Bob?" I said.
"Upstairs. In an interrogation room," Solomon said. "I'm due up there in a few minutes. Right now I'm more worried about Ellie than I am about Bob."
She looked completely forlorn, sitting very primly on a bench that faced a pebbled glass door reading DETECTIVE DIVISION.
"This is all my fault," she said with no inflection whatsoever, as if she'd memorized it and were speaking by rote. "I never should have gone to see Father Daly that night."
"Ellie, listen," Solomon said, leaning down and taking her frail hands in his big purposeful ones. "You've told me that Bob isn't guilty, and Bob's told me that, too. And that being the case, we're going to be all right."
She looked up at him with frightened eyes. "But innocent people are found guilty all the time."
"Not as often as you probably think, Ellie," Solomon said. "What you need to do is relax. I know that's not easy in these circumstances, but you have to try. You don't want Bob to see you like this. That's not going to help him any, is it?"
She smiled up at him, patted his hand gratefully. He was for this moment her very favorite uncle.
"You're right, Harry. I need to be in control of myself, don't I?"
I heard footsteps coming around the far corner. Detective Holloway appeared, walking quickly, spritzing her inhalant into her right nostril.
I walked over to her so we could talk privately.
She wore a red turtleneck and a pair of stonewashed jeans. She carried her piece on a small holster attached to the left side of her belt.
"It gets worse at night," she said, taking the white plastic inhaler from her nostril. "You should hear my poor kids when they're sleeping." Her nose and eyes were red from pollen.
"You brought Bob Wilson in for questioning?"
"I sure did."
And with that, she sneezed again, and went over to grab Harry Solomon.
When I sat down next to Ellie, she said, "He didn't do it." When I didn't say anything, she said, "Don't you believe me?"
"Right now I don't believe anything in particular. There's a lot in the air."
"A lot of what?"
"Odds and ends. Things that might mean something but then again might not."
"Like what?"
"Oh, like the fact that Jenny at the rectory almost stabbed her counselor two years ago. A prosecuting attorney might say that shows a predisposition to violent behavior. And then there's a bunch of newspaper clippings that belonged to Father Daly. I haven't figured out what they mean yet. Maybe they mean nothing. And then there's you and your husband. And the man who heard Father Daly arguing with somebody out at the fishing cabin."
"You really think one of us could have done that?"
"It's a possibility."
"That's a terrible thing to say."
"You were in his room. So was your husband."
"Oh, God," she said, remorse gripping her like a seizure. "I started this whole mess, didn't I?"
"The mess between Bob and Father Daly? Yes, you probably did."
She put her hands together and sat very still. She looked as if she wanted a magic bus to come and pick her up and take her far, far away.
"The Monsignor hated him," she said softly.
"Hated Father Daly?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Father Daly knew something about him."
"I don't know what that means."
"Neither do I. He never told me what it was exactly. But every once in a while, after they'd had an argument, Father Daly would say, "One call to the Archbishop, and Monsignor Gray'll be out in the boonies."
"Why didn't they like each other?"
"There's a schism in the Church. The old-style Catholics versus the new-style Catholics. Father Daly was new-style. He used to make fun of Monsignor Gray to his face, especially when they were conducting religious classes together.
He wasn't just showing off — Father Daly, I mean. He really believed that the Monsignor's style of religion was very destructive. Heaven and hell and all that. Father Daly thought that religion should be more like science. Believe in the here and now and how we treat each other. Not worry about the old myths so much."
"I could see where that would rankle Steve."
"He's a nice man, Robert, but not the brightest person I've ever met."
"Fat John."
"Pardon?"
"That's what they used to say about the Pope they called Fat John. A very decent man but not a genius. He got a lot done, though, for not being a genius."
"It was more style than anything — the Monsignor and Father Daly, I mean."
"Style — and something that Father Daly might have been holding over Steve's head."
"You should ask him."
"I plan to."
She touched my sleeve. "I'm fighting for my husband's sake. I — he could have done it. His temper—"
"I know."
"But could have is very different from did."
"I know that, too." I stood up. "You could be here for a long time."
She nodded. "My time to pay a little dues, I guess."
She looked like a sad angel.
"I'll probably talk to you tomorrow," I said.
"I want you to keep working on the case — harder than ever now. That's why I called you. I've already put a check in the mail for two thousand dollars."
She tried to smile but it didn't quite work. Not tonight. She just looked weary.
I put a hand on her shoulder and nodded good night.
Chapter Twenty
When I was finished working on the c
omputer, I called Gilhooley.
Even before I heard him say hello, the receiver was filled with the ear-pounding noise of Cream playing White Room.
The only records Gilhooley owned dated from the late sixties and seventies. By now the surfaces of those records sounded as if they'd been worked over with steel wool. The hissing was louder than the music, but this didn't seem to bother Gilhooley any. Night after night, the ghosts of Janice and Jimi and Jim Morrison appeared in his book-littered living room.
"You think you could turn that down a little?" I said. Gilhooley can irritate me as few other people can. I have the same effect on him.
"I can hear you just fine," he said.
"Well, I can't hear you."
"Just a minute," he said
I heard him pad away. I heard the music turned down. I heard him pad back to the phone.
"That's better. Thank you."
"You're getting to be an old lady, Robert."
"Well, hopefully an old lady with her hearing still intact."
"I wish Cream would reunite," he said.
"I wish the Monkees would reunite."
"I know that's supposed to be a joke, Robert, but all that bullshit commercial music you listen to, I wouldn't be surprised if you did wish the Monkees would reunite."
To him, Steely Dan is bullshit commercial music.
I said, "I just wonder how your background checks are going."
"Well, I'm mostly picking up odds and ends."
"I'm listening."
"This Father Ryan?"
"Uh-huh."
"Very bad temper. Yells at people in the confessional."
"That one I'm aware of."
"You were kidding about the Monkees, weren't you?"
"I'm not even going to answer that stupid question."
"Wow. You had me worried." Then: "And your friend, Monsignor Gray?"
"What about him?"
"Last year at this time, he sold his brand-new Chrysler — that he'd just bought a few months earlier — to raise cash."
I thought of what Ellie Wilson had told me about Father Daly "having something" on Steve.
"Any idea why he needed to raise cash?" I said.
"Not that I've been able to find so far."
"Anything else?"
"The housekeeper Bernice?"
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