The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

Boleslaw was on his second boilermaker when Luke Flanagan joined them.

  “Maud says you were looking for me.”

  “One question, Luke. Where were you on Wednesday afternoon?”

  “I thought so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did someone see me leave?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Luke’s story was the twin of Amos Cadbury’s, only he had been in the garage apartment before the lawyer, and he had threatened to throw Packer out of the garage apartment on his ear. For years he had blamed Packer for the fact that Wally had not turned out as Luke had hoped.

  “We found the wrench, Luke.”

  “Have a boilermaker,” Boleslaw urged Luke.

  “Do I have time?” Luke asked.

  “I’ll have another myself.”

  13

  The arrest of Luke Flanagan on suspicion of murder put Amos Cadbury in a delicate position, and he drove himself out to St. Hilary’s to talk with Father Dowling. “They’ve arrested Luke Flanagan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Father, I may have done a stupid thing.”

  “I doubt that, Amos.”

  “It’s true that I don’t regret it.”

  “Tell me.”

  They sat in the pastor’s study, the door closed against the curiosity of Marie Murkin. Amos unwrapped a cigar and prepared it lovingly. When he applied a match to it and turned it slowly, ensuring an even burn, it was a work of art.

  “Luke came to me and told me that he had gone out to his old house to throw Packer out of the garage apartment. He said he came upon a scene very much like the one I came upon.”

  “Do you mean he found Packer already dead?”

  “I believed him. I do believe him. On the way up the stairs, he picked up something he had stumbled on. It turned out to be the wrench that killed Packer. Luke fled in a panic, and when he got outside, he threw the wrench into the backyard, where it was found.”

  “That accounts for his fingerprints on it.”

  Father Dowling remembered Melissa sitting in this study, telling him that she had made a big mistake in allowing Packer to use the garage apartment. He told Amos that.

  “On the very day it happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good Lord, Father, what if she had gone home and surprised the intruder?” The old lawyer closed his eyes at the thought.

  “She spoke of helping Packer set himself up in business.”

  “Yes, a driving range. We had talked about that, Melissa and I. He had an appointment to see me when I was to give him the good news. Of course, I saw it largely as a way to get him away from her. Once he had the money, he wouldn’t have any reason to linger, but he didn’t show up for the appointment.” Amos paused. “You’ll forgive me if I say that was an uncommon experience for me. I drove out there in anger, much as Luke himself had earlier.”

  “Packer’s experience with driving ranges hadn’t been good.”

  “What experience of his had been? When he wept at Wallace’s funeral, I liked the man. Everyone else turned it into some sort of pep rally, even … But I must not criticize the Franciscans.”

  Father Dowling smiled. Amos had an old-fashioned conception of the deference due the clergy.

  “Now, if they persist in seeing Luke as the assailant, I will have to come forward and testify in his behalf. I assured him at the time that he had been wise to tell me, not that I thought he would become a suspect.”

  “Wouldn’t that come under lawyer/client privilege?”

  “Of course.”

  “What a star-crossed family the Flanagans are.”

  “Indeed, indeed. The sins of the son visited on the father.”

  * * *

  Edna, when Father Dowling had talked to her before the discovery of Packer’s body, had expressed annoyance at Melissa.

  “What else did she suppose people would think? The two of them were inseparable here, Father, but to let him move into that apartment—” Edna made a face. “Is she really that naive?”

  “What is Packer like?”

  “He’s a man.” Then Edna laughed. “A real charmer.”

  “So Marie assures me.”

  “What on earth does he live on? He had no job. He’s too young for Social Security. I suppose he was mooching off Melissa.”

  “Where did he live before he moved to the garage apartment.”

  “A motel.” She paused. “The Tiger Lily.”

  “That’s its name?”

  “Not the most wholesome place.”

  When he mentioned the motel to Phil Keegan, his old friend sat back. “That was a Pianone operation. Maybe it still is.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Drugs, women, the lot.”

  “I’m surprised that a man on parole was permitted to stay there.”

  “Don’t get me started, Roger. Most parole officers are convinced their clients were the victims of injustice and are incapable of wrongdoing. If someone has never done anything wrong, he can scarcely relapse.”

  “It sounds like he’s better off not living in such a place.”

  “But was Melissa Flanagan better off having him living in her garage apartment?”

  * * *

  The next day, Melissa came to the rectory. Marie treated her with deference, put her in the front parlor, and informed Father Dowling in lowered tones who had come to see him.

  When he went to the parlor, she was sitting in a chair, looking out the window. She turned to him, her eyes wide with horror. “Father, what have I done?”

  She seemed to think that by offering Packer the garage apartment, she had put him in harm’s way. Father Dowling soothed her, assuring her that she had performed an act of kindness.

  “Try to convince my father-in-law of that. Oh, the poor man. I seem to have brought him nothing but tragedy and sorrow.”

  She had cast herself in the role of nemesis to her family and friends. She wished that she had never come back to Fox River.

  “Did Gregory ever say anything to suggest he was in danger?”

  “No.” As soon as she said it, second thoughts seemed to come. “He had spent time in prison, you know.”

  “I have heard he was very popular there.”

  “Of course, he would have been.”

  “So he never suggested that he had any enemies.”

  “Only his first wife.”

  “How so?”

  “I didn’t want to hear the story, not really. It was sordid. They met and married in a matter of weeks, and almost immediately he regretted it. She deserted him, absconding with all their savings. You always hear of husbands abusing their wives, but in their case it was the reverse. He told me he sometimes feared she would kill him.”

  In the silence that followed, that reported threat from the past and what had happened in the Flanagan garage apartment seemed two ends of the same thought.

  “Did he ever say where she is now?”

  “Somewhere in California. That’s why he came back here. To troubles of a different kind, as it turned out, and then…”

  This seemed information Phil Keegan should have, and Father Dowling asked Melissa if she would mind his passing it along.

  * * *

  Phil nodded. “Cy has tracked down his first wife.”

  “In California?”

  “Oh, she’s back in the Chicago area.”

  The two men sat looking at each other.

  “Cy will follow up on that, Father.”

  14

  Maud realized how close she had become to Luke now that he was staying with his daughter-in-law in the house he had built for his family in Fox River. She called him every day and urged him to come see her.

  “I’m bad luck, Maud.”

  “I know that. I’m tired of good luck.”

  “Now you can flirt with Boleslaw.”

  It was good to hear that barking laugh again.

  “I could come see you.”

  “You wouldn’t b
e able to find it.”

  “Being lost in Fox River sounds better than being found in Chicago. Or vice versa.”

  As it turned out, he arranged for his nephew Frank Looney to pick her up and drive her to Fox River.

  “What’s it like living there?” Frank Looney asked when they set off.

  “One mad whirl from morning to night.”

  “No kidding?”

  That might have been his motto. He was an earnest man in his forties without a whisper of a sense of humor. Once that was established, she gave him a straightforward account of life in Stalag 17. This designation puzzled him.

  “Your uncle calls it that.” She went on to tell him it was a World War II POW camp.

  “A prison?”

  “That’s right.”

  Luke’s jokes were bad enough unexplained, but the mention of prison cast a pall over the conversation.

  “So you run Flanagan Concrete.”

  Here was a topic he could handle. For the rest of the drive, she heard about how well the business was doing and the innovations he had made (“Always with Uncle Luke’s approval”). He thought he had inherited his uncle’s Midas touch, if turning sand and other things into cement was comparable to changing things into gold. This was Maud’s unexpressed caveat.

  “How many trucks do you have?”

  She got an inventory of the business, the jobs they were on now, the prospects for the future. Maud was glad when they got to the house.

  “I better get back to the yard,” Frank said when his uncle came out to greet Maud.

  “Maybe I’ll keep her here.”

  “I understand you have an empty apartment,” Maud deadpanned.

  Frank just stared at the two of them and then got out of there.

  “What a witty nephew you have.”

  “He’s what you get when your sister marries a Looney. Not too smart but reliable. The business is in good hands.”

  They stood facing one another. He was obviously glad to see her, so why didn’t he make a move?

  “Shake,” she said, thrusting out her hand.

  They were hand in hand when Melissa came out. She beamed at them and then, apparently remembering the cloud Luke was under, looked sad.

  Maud got a tour of the house—quite a mansion; she wouldn’t have imagined Luke building such a place, let alone living in it. No wonder he had moved to Stalag 17.

  “I raised my family here,” Luke said, following along as Melissa showed Maud around.

  “I don’t want any more children.”

  “How’s Boleslaw?”

  “Hell on wheels.”

  “Who’s Boleslaw?” Melissa asked.

  “That’s her boyfriend.”

  “I think he prefers you.”

  They ended up in the kitchen after Luke said the front room was for company. Coffee and gingersnaps.

  “Is this a no smoking area?”

  “Light up, Maud.”

  Melissa sat across the table from them with the silliest smile on her face. Maud wondered if she came with the house.

  Later, in the living room, she was shown the family photographs on the mantel. She studied one. “Remember that man I told you I met in Kentucky? Put a beard on this face, and they could be cousins.”

  “That’s my son, Wally. He’s dead.”

  Maud observed a moment of silence. “And this is your first wife?”

  “They threw away the mold.”

  “My husband thought I was pretty moldy, too.”

  Luke had his arm around her hips. She lifted it higher. “Watch it.”

  After Melissa left them alone, they quit the banter and talked about his troubles.

  “They actually think I did it, Maud.”

  “Well, you know better.”

  “They’re down to two suspects.”

  “Two.”

  “It’s me or Melissa.”

  He showed her the article by Mervel in the local paper. It read like a bad Sherlock Holmes story, pure speculation. Except, of course, for the wrench.

  “That’s what made you Public Enemy Number One?”

  Mervel had been told about the rubber gloves in the apartment’s kitchen sink. Someone—it was clear the someone was Melissa—could have worn gloves when she wielded the wrench.

  “Show me the scene of the crime.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do you think I came all the way out here just to see you?”

  “All right.”

  They went out a side door and toward the garage. The area was marked off with yellow tape. There was a cop on duty who stirred into life at their approach. He moved over when Luke tried to go around him. “I can’t let you go up there.”

  “Hey, I own the place.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s still off-limits.”

  Maud said, “Not only is he the owner, he’s the chief suspect.”

  Luke waved her off. “You don’t object if we go into the garage, do you?”

  “Not upstairs.”

  “The garage.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Once inside, he lowered the door again. It was warm and musty and poorly lit.

  “Alone at last,” Maud said.

  “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  He led her between the cars to a workbench along the back wall. Tools were neatly arranged over it; there were containers of screws and nails and staples. Luke pointed to the ceiling, from which dangled a rope with a wooden handle attached. He pulled it, and a door in the ceiling dropped open. A switch over the workbench activated the metal ladder that began to descend from the opened door, section by section. When it reached the garage floor, Luke did things to its sides to make them rigid.

  “I’ll go first. I’m not wearing a skirt.”

  “I noticed that.”

  They emerged into a pantry off the kitchen of the apartment, where Luke explained about the alternative entry.

  “When this apartment was being designed, Wally was a teenager, always reading crazy stories. He proposed this ladder exit. We may have been the first ones to use it in twenty years. It was the only way Wally ever went up here.” As Luke spoke, his face lit up with those memories. He stopped. “And Wally’s dead. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  So she saw where the body had lain, and looked down the stairway on which Luke had found the bloody wrench.

  Melissa drove Maud back to Chicago, and they talked about Luke’s troubles. Not that Melissa thought her father-in-law was in any trouble.

  “Of course, he should have reported what he found, but in a way he did. He went to Amos Cadbury and told him the whole story.”

  “He shouldn’t have picked up that wrench.”

  “He tripped over it. It was perfectly natural to pick it up.”

  Melissa was so sure Luke was innocent that she made him sound guilty. Not that Maud didn’t admire the younger woman’s loyalty.

  “I should have given him an alibi, said we were smooching in my room at the time and he made up that story to protect my name.”

  “Because of the time? But that’s nonsense. They have to take my word for where I was at the time.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I told them I was talking with a priest.” A laughing Melissa changed lanes, passed a semi, and then got back in the fast lane.

  Maud wondered if Luke really was in trouble. She wondered more what she could do for him. That was when she decided to visit her son the monk. Maybe God would hear her prayers better if she sent them up from a Trappist monastery.

  15

  When Tuttle entered the building, a little guy in a uniform came out from behind a kind of pulpit and stood in his path. “Where you going?”

  “That’s some uniform.” The lawyer put out a hand. “Tuttle. Of Tuttle and Tuttle.”

  The hand had made the guy dance backward, but now he took it warily. “Ferret. Who you want to see?”

  “Sandra Bochenski.”

  “What’s Tuttle
and Tuttle?”

  “The largest law firm in Fox River.”

  Tuttle didn’t like Ferret’s laugh, but he joined in. Elementary strategy. If Ferret blocked the elevator, he would have to telephone his client and tell her he was in the lobby. If she still was his client.

  “What’s she need a lawyer for?”

  “She’s bringing charges against you.”

  Ferret’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Don’t I wish. Geez, it’s good to have her back in the building.”

  “Did she get her old place back?”

  “Are you kidding? No, she’s subletting. Got the place for a couple months.”

  “You knew her before?”

  Ferret nodded, then looked beyond Tuttle. Someone had come through the revolving doors. The man sailed past Tuttle and Ferret without so much as looking at them, went to the elevator and punched a button, and then waited with obvious impatience until the doors slid open and he entered.

  When the elevator door closed, Ferret looked at Tuttle and shook his head. “This was always a class place, but now?” He shook his head again. “He stashed his bimbo here.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  Tuttle knew. It was Marco Pianone. The woman Ferret called a bimbo was Sylvia Beach. Tuttle thought about that on the way up in the elevator.

  Sandra was in a housecoat, her hair wild, a glass of orange juice in her hand. “I thought you said you’d call first.”

  “The battery on my cell phone must be dead.”

  The apartment was in the front of the building with a view of the lake. She offered Tuttle coffee, but when he accepted she said she would make some.

  “Is that orange juice?”

  So they drank orange juice while she explained to him why she no longer needed his services.

  “Because Gregory Packer is dead?”

  “What’s the point of finding out if he was responsible for what happened to Wally? I think he was involved in some way, he had to be, but what difference does it make now?”

  “I hate loose ends.”

  Sitting in this lovely apartment gave Tuttle the sensation that his career had entered a new and affluent phase, but she was telling him it was all over. On the edge of his mind, he was trying to figure out the significance of Marco Pianone’s stashing his bimbo in this building. The Pianones had certainly come up in the world. In the past, their bimbos would have been housed in places like the Tiger Lily motel, not on the Gold Coast of Chicago.