The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

  “You think you’d win?”

  “Somebody has to win.”

  “That’s right.” He grinned.

  Sylvia decided he looked like Cary Grant. She was into old movies on TCM, and there had been a week of Cary Grant. In one of them, the actor had played someone like Marco, but back in the old days when the actor still had rough edges. Maybe that’s what suggested the similarity.

  Over a week had gone by with no word from Marco when Sylvia tapped out a reply to Brenda. She got an answer while she was still on the computer. Brenda was all excited to learn that Sylvia was back in Fox River. When could they get together?

  Sylvia called K&S and asked for Brenda Kelly.

  “Speaking.”

  “Sylvia. What are you doing tonight?”

  A squeal of delight. “Nothing! Where shall we meet?”

  “I can pick you up there.”

  And she did, at five o’clock. Brenda hopped into Sylvia’s car and then just stared. “Your hair!”

  “Like it?”

  It was an odd way to start a conversation after so many years. How many? They stopped for a drink and spent the first hour figuring out exactly how long it had been. Fifteen years? Geez. Brenda had put on a little weight, but she looked good, and she bubbled and babbled as if she didn’t have another friend in the world.

  “No husband and family?”

  “Not yet.”

  They laughed. It seemed to restore them to the status they had both had years ago. It would only get dicey when Brenda got around to Wally. They moved from the bar to a table and ordered. A bottle of wine in the bucket next to their table, good food. It was a place Sylvia had come to with Marco. Not too smart. She didn’t want to run into him here. He might think she was checking up on him. That’s why, afterward, she suggested a visit to a casino, one Marco didn’t manage.

  They played the slots, sitting on stools amid a crowd of blue-haired ladies who fed the machines as if they were hypnotized. If this was gambling, she and Brenda decided to leave it to the addicts. So they drove back to K&S, where Brenda could get her car, and swore they would get together soon.

  “We haven’t even scratched the surface,” Brenda said.

  “I know. You haven’t told me about the men in your life.”

  “That wouldn’t take long.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  A little sisterly hug, a peck on the cheek, and Brenda toddled off to her car. Sylvia watched her go, put her car in gear, and slid out of the lot. The years seemed to have taken no toll on Brenda, none at all; she was just the way she had been when they worked for Wally. By contrast, Sylvia felt that she herself had been around the block a few times.

  * * *

  “Not too smart,” Marco said when she told him about seeing Brenda.

  “Why not?”

  He moved his hands, shrugged, said nothing, Maybe someday she would learn how to read his sign language. She told him about going to the casino.

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I wonder how much we won.”

  Not too smart, he had said, and that, along with the sign language, was a message. So she wouldn’t see Brenda again. It had been a miracle that they had avoided talking about Wally Flanagan. Being with Brenda had brought back the innocence of youth, the way she had been before getting mixed up with Wally. Well, she had gotten mixed up with him, and then she got wind of the blonde in the Loop. What had she expected from a married man, fidelity? Then she watched what he was doing to the blonde’s account, and suspicion grew. Of course, he helped her and the other girls with their investments, but he was making Sandra Bochenski instantly rich. So she followed them, she learned where the blonde lived, and she had a chat with the little guy who opened doors at the building.

  “I’m going to miss her,” he said, his eyes going all over Sylvia.

  She kept her shoulders back, she gave him her sweetest smile, and she learned about California. Well, by God, if Wally was taking off with a woman it was going to be her. And so it was.

  When the news broke about Gregory Packer’s death, Sylvia felt a chill. Every day there had been e-mails from Brenda, but they went unanswered.

  “Maybe I ought to move,” she suggested to Marco.

  “Why?”

  She reminded him about Brenda. He nodded.

  “There’s a building in the Loop that would work,” she said.

  She gave him the address, and two days later she moved. With her crew cut, she was a stranger to the doorman, and when she went by she looked right through him.

  8

  Since no relatives of Gregory Packer could be located, it had seemed that Melissa Flanagan would take responsibility, the man having been the occupant of her garage apartment when he had been slain. Then Father Dowling got a call from McDivitt, the undertaker, saying that the man’s former wife would assume expenses for the funeral.

  “Will you be burying him, Father?”

  “I’m told he grew up in the parish.”

  “The body hasn’t been released yet. I’ll let you know.”

  The seniors in the parish center, for whom a funeral was, if not a festive occasion, at least a familiar one, were glad to hear that Packer would be buried from St. Hilary’s. They were less than glad that Melissa had been bumped from the role of mourner in chief by Packer’s former wife.

  “They would have married, I’m sure of it,” Lenore Holland claimed.

  “They were living together, weren’t they?” Gino Bacci asked.

  “Oh, shush. He lived in the garage.”

  “What husband doesn’t?”

  Reproving backs were turned on Gino. This was no time for levity. In a sense, Gregory Packer had been one of them, and his death gave them the melancholy pleasure of contemplating their own.

  “Let’s go over to the church and say a rosary for the repose of his soul,” Mimi urged.

  “That can wait for the wake.”

  “When will it be?”

  Edna assured them that Father Dowling would let them know.

  * * *

  Phil Keegan thought all this was going a little too far. “I suppose you’ll want Cy to act as altar boy. He’s the only survivor.”

  Marie Murkin made a wet disapproving sound. “Speak well of the dead, Captain Keegan.”

  “The more we find out about him, the harder that is.”

  Phil brought Father Dowling and the housekeeper up to date on the investigation. It had been easy to establish the cause of death, but no weapon had been found, nor were there any clues to who had managed to climb those stairs and surprise Packer from behind. The blow had been to the back of the head.

  “Crushed his skull,” Phil said, and Marie shuddered.

  “Was it an intruder? The man was a stranger here. What enemies could he have had?”

  “Oh, he had enemies enough. His second wife is dead, drowned in the pool at their home, and her nephew badgered the police to investigate, but there was nothing to investigate.”

  “Are you saying the nephew is an enemy?”

  “The police in Laguna Beach gave details to Cy that weren’t in the newspaper accounts at the time. The woman’s death made Packer the proprietor of the driving range the nephew had longed to have. I don’t know if Packer was a golfer, but the nephew was. Is. You may have seen him on television playing in one of those celebrity pro-am tournaments. He couldn’t make it as a pro because he had an awful temper. Broke clubs after a bad shot, or threw them into the woods. Once he whacked his caddy with a putter when the kid made a sound that caused him to miss a short putt. He was sued and settled out of court.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Lefty Smith. Funny name. He golfed right-handed.”

  “Phil, you’re not suggesting that Smith came to Fox River and struck down Gregory Packer, are you?”

  “You wondered if he had any enemies.”

  “Well, that’s one, if he even counts,” Marie said.
<
br />   “Don’t forget he was in Joliet.”

  “So was Earl Hospers,” Marie said indignantly.

  “Have you made inquiries at the prison, Phil?”

  “Not yet, Roger.”

  That night, Father Dowling dropped by the Hospers’. Earl was in the backyard, planting begonias, and the priest went out to talk to him. “You heard about Gregory Packer, Earl?”

  “Edna told me.”

  “Had you known him?”

  Earl looked up at the priest. “You mean in the place?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew who he was.”

  “Could what happened to him be connected to his time there?”

  Earl patted down the earth around a just-planted begonia. “Nah. He was pretty popular. He gave golf lessons.”

  “Is there a golf course at Joliet?”

  “There’s a driving range now. Thanks to Packer.”

  “No enemies?”

  Earl shook his head. It was obvious he did not enjoy this reminder of the long years away from his family. Father Dowling wanted to ask him if he had gardened at Joliet but decided not to.

  “Oh, Earl has the touch,” Edna said when he went back to the house and commented on the begonias. She leaned toward Father Dowling. “His cell was full of plants. They called him the Florist.”

  9

  Amos Cadbury drove to South Bend for the Notre Dame alumni reunion, having first taken the precaution of securing a room in the Morris Inn. On one such return, he had endured several days in a residence hall and found himself unwilling to join in the more noisy evocations of past youth. The room had been far more comfortable than those he had occupied as a student, but the hubbub up and down the hall throughout the night made sleep difficult. Now, he checked in at the Morris Inn, then registered at the Alumni Center next door. Properly labeled, he ran into his old classmate Maurice Patrick in the lobby of the inn.

  Patrick’s name tag bounced off his enormous belly as he approached. He took Amos in his hairy arms to whisper in his ear, “We can be a twosome on what’s left of Burke.” He stepped back. “Six thirty okay?”

  “A.M.?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Amos had never played the new Warren course to the north of the campus. Burke, the original course, had been reduced to nine holes, residence halls having been built on the former back nine. No course he had played since could compete with Burke for his affection, but then he had been a better golfer in those days.

  He had a drink with Maurice, who seemed already to have had several, and then suggested they stroll the campus, but Maurice unfolded the reunion program. Several seminars and presentations had been checked.

  “There’s a discussion on the future of Notre Dame in half an hour,” Maurice said, pointing to one of the checked items. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Amos missed it. He was more interested in the past of the university than in its future. Like the vast majority of alumni, he was generous to his alma mater, and he leafed through the literature that arrived from South Bend with alarming regularity; what had been a secluded, rural, and all-male campus when he was there seemed to be expanding in all directions, but for him the past tense defined Notre Dame. Walking from the inn in the direction of the Main Building with the great statue of Our Lady atop its golden dome, Amos was struck by the familiarity and unfamiliarity of the place. There were at least twice as many buildings as there had been in his day.

  He made his way to the Grotto, whispered a prayer for his departed wife, and then went down to the lake, where ducks and geese were everywhere. So were benches, at intervals of fifty feet. These lined the campus walks as well, each having a little bronze plaque commemorating the donor. Amos sat and looked out at the lake and thought of what he had left behind in Fox River.

  The horror of coming upon the body of Gregory Packer when he had gone to tell the man that his plans for a driving range in Barrington could go forward was still with him. He had not approved of Melissa’s decision to underwrite Packer’s venture, knowing what Luke’s reaction would be. It was difficult to think that Melissa’s support could be kept a secret from her father-in-law.

  “I’m going to sell the place now,” Luke had said to Amos.

  “But Melissa is living there.”

  “She won’t want to stay there now.”

  “Luke, I can’t tell you what a shock it was to discover the body.”

  “I know.” Luke seemed to wait for his remark to register. “Amos, there is something I have to tell you.”

  Amos listened to Luke’s account of driving angrily to Fox River to confront the unwelcome occupant of the garage apartment.

  “I would have thrown him down the stairs if he had objected to leaving at once.”

  Amos found that he was almost indignant at this revelation. “Luke, why didn’t you call the police?”

  His explanation of that was halfway understandable. He had been in a rage since he heard Packer was staying in the garage apartment; he had said threatening things to Melissa, and to Maud.

  “Maud.”

  “A woman I’ve come to know. A fellow resident.” Luke frowned. “Can a woman be a fellow?”

  “I’d have to meet her to know.”

  “You will, you will. Amos, there’s more.”

  So it was that Amos heard of the bloody wrench Luke had picked up when he mounted the stairs to the garage apartment—and then the grisly discovery.

  “I got out of there. It wasn’t a decision, Amos, I just skedaddled. “He might have been Lord Jim explaining how he had jumped ship. “When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized I was still holding the wrench.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I threw it into the weeds behind the compost heap.”

  “Dear God.”

  “What should I do, Amos?”

  Now, looking out over the lake that seemed unchanged since his student days, Amos wondered if he had ever imagined in his youth that he would face such a problem as this. The wrench must surely be the murder weapon. The police investigation had so far not turned it up. Was it possible that it could lie there in the weeds undiscovered? Amos asked Luke for a more exact description of where he had thrown the wrench. That was when he made the decision that weighed so heavily on him now.

  “Do nothing, Luke. It is possible it will not be found. If it is, our conversation will serve to explain what you did.”

  Luke slumped in his chair. “What a relief.”

  But Amos had felt no relief, not then, not now. Of course, he believed Luke’s story. It was absurd to think that he would have used that wrench as a weapon on Gregory Packer and then come to Amos with the account he had just given. The problem was that the wrench could prove decisive in determining who had killed Gregory Packer.

  Any hope Amos had that he could simply drive away from the problem and lose himself in the past on the campus of Notre Dame was dashed. For the rest of the day, he took part in a few of the planned events; he had dinner à deux with Father Hesburgh, and it was all he could do not to consult this wise old priest about his troubled conscience.

  “Are you still on the advisory council at the law school, Amos?”

  “No. Well, I am an emeritus member.”

  “And I am president emeritus.” A sweet sad smile settled on the handsome visage of the man who has been called the second founder of Notre Dame. They lifted their manhattans and toasted the passage of time.

  In the morning, Amos played nine holes with a hungover Maurice, taking the wheel of the cart as if he were his old classmate’s designated driver. Maurice had trouble with math as he reconstructed his score on each hole and then on a par three took his driver with its enormous head, lunged at his ball, and, improbably, sent it sailing toward the green. It landed just in front, rolled toward the hole, and dropped in. They stood looking at what Maurice had done.

  Maurice was too elated to crow. He just danced up and down, his eyes aglow. “That’s i
t, Amos. I’ve never had a hole in one in my life before. This is my last round. I’m going to put my clubs away and dine out on that shot for the rest of my days. I only wish Packer could have seen it.”

  “Packer?”

  “A man I took lessons from in California. At a driving range.”

  “Gregory Packer?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I did.”

  “Amazing. The son of a gun owes me money. Now, I don’t care.”

  Amos said nothing further. Back in his room, he showered and dressed for the drive back to Fox River. He had had all the reunion he could handle.

  10

  Hazel wouldn’t let up about the disappearance of his client Sandra Bochenski, so Tuttle stayed away from his office. If he had been a drinking man, the occasion would have called for going on a real toot. He sat next to Mervel of the Fox River Tribune at the bar across from the courthouse and, watching the reporter emptying glass after glass, Tuttle felt like taking the pledge. Mervel had just come from an informal press conference across the street.

  “They don’t know anything,” Mervel said with odd satisfaction.

  “No suspects?” The fugitive thought that Melissa Flanagan might have had something to do with the death of the man she had let use the garage apartment came and went. What a tragic woman. First her husband disappeared, then his body was found in a cement mixer, and now a man had been murdered in the Flanagan garage while Melissa was living in the house. Rueful thoughts of long ago when Melissa had been his client added to Tuttle’s melancholy. How much had she been told of the woman Wally Flanagan had planned to meet in California and begin a new life with, living in sin together? Tuttle was not given to moralizing, but marital infidelity was one thing he condemned unequivocally. His parents had provided him with a model of what marriage should be, steady and loving and undramatic, until death do us part. Perhaps he himself had never married because he knew he could not realize that ideal. Imagine being tied down to someone like Hazel. He shuddered.