The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

  Cy shrugged.

  “I caught a glimpse of Melissa.”

  Cy turned and looked into the sad eyes of Wally Flanagan. Geez. First Greg Packer, now Wally.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Hell is the word for it. Except for recently.”

  At the restaurant, Wally ordered a margherita pizza, just cheese and tomatoes, and Cy asked for spaghetti carbonara. “Wine?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m on duty.”

  “I’m on the wagon.”

  They settled for ice water. Eating seemed to be a way of putting off talking. Cy had imagined working the guy over, breaking his silly story, and here he was convinced he was having lunch with Wally Flanagan. He noticed the wedding ring.

  “Amos gave it back to me.”

  “Amos?”

  “He said neither my dad nor Melissa wanted it when they took it off that body. I wonder who it was.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “We can do that.”

  “Good. Do you need proof, Cy?”

  “It would only be a negative fact.”

  His heart wasn’t in it, though. He was glad that neither Phil Keegan nor Agnes Lamb had been there to witness the collapse of his skepticism. Then he remembered his thoughts on the drive to St. Hilary’s, and once more he was a cop. “When did you last see Greg Packer?”

  “Greg? Years and years ago. Why did he come back?”

  “He and Melissa were pretty close. Remember the apartment over the garage at your house?”

  “Cy, I’ve read the papers.”

  “So you know Greg was staying there. Melissa was living in the house.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Your old girlfriends came back to town, too. Sandra, Sylvia.”

  “What a shit I’ve been.”

  “That’s been the consensus.”

  He accepted this agreement. Had he expected Cy to protest his self-description?

  “And you’ve been questioning Sandra and my dad.”

  “Somebody killed Greg Packer.”

  “Neither of them could have done such a thing.”

  “Maybe you’ll be called as a character witness.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “We’ll go downtown, where you can dictate a statement, the whole sad story.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “What would be the charge? Maybe your story can help us find out what happened to Greg Packer.”

  3

  Tuttle was buying a package of gum in the little shop just off the courthouse rotunda when he saw Cy Horvath go by with a bearded man. Was Cy running in vagrants now? It was a slack time, but this seemed a stretch. Tuttle stepped out and watched them enter the elevator. From the large tiled area beneath the dome, he watched the cage go jerkily up to the top floor, where the detective division was housed. There was always the pressroom, where Tuttle could get a free cup of coffee, not yet toxic this early in the afternoon, or he might go up and see who Cy was hauling in. Not exactly the plight of Buridan’s ass, but Tuttle hesitated. That was how Peanuts Pianone found him.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Peanuts asked.

  “Have you ever taken a good look at the painting in the dome?”

  A personified Justice, blindfolded, held aloft a scale. She seemed to be floating in a sea of clouds.

  “What saint is that?” Peanuts asked.

  “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “I can see it all right from here.”

  “Come on.”

  They took the stairway that wound around the interior of the great barrel that rose from the black-and-white-tiled first floor to the dome above.

  They went to the pressroom, where they settled down with Styrofoam cups of not quite potable coffee. Ninian slept on the couch; Bea was frowning over a crossword puzzle; Mervel sat at his computer, eyes closed, fingers poised over the keyboard like Van Cliburn about to pounce. At work on his novel.

  An irritating sound emanated from the inner pocket of Tuttle’s seersucker jacket. He took out his cell phone, saw that it was Hazel on the line, and turned it off. Peanuts growled. Agnes Lamb had just passed swiftly by the open door. Tuttle’s instinct told him that something was afoot. He got up and left the pressroom, strolling down the corridor. The door of Cy Horvath’s office was closed. What is there about a closed door that excites curiosity? The closed door might be a metaphor of Tuttle’s life. Peanuts had followed him.

  “Find out what’s going on,” Tuttle ordered.

  “Where?”

  Tuttle nodded at Horvath’s office. Peanuts went to the door and opened it. The bearded man sat across from Cy. There was a secretary with a shorthand typewriter clicking away. Agnes looked on. At the sight of her, Peanuts pulled the door closed.

  Why would Cy be taking a statement from a vagrant? The shorthand typist was Vivian McHugh, who had a crush on Tuttle, perhaps because he wore, summer and winter, an Irish tweed hat. Was he willing to wait until he could ask Vivian what was going on? Peanuts had gone off down the corridor, so Tuttle apparently had no choice. He returned to the pressroom, activated his phone, and called his office.

  “Tuttle and Tuttle.” Hazel’s voice was brisk and efficient. For a moment Tuttle had the illusion that he was in contact with a flourishing law firm.

  “You called.”

  “Is that you?” The only thing worse than Hazel’s disdain was Hazel in a friendly mood. “Sandra Bochenski wants to see you, God knows why.”

  “Put me through.”

  “I’ll give you the number.”

  She rattled it off, but Tuttle already had Sandra’s number. Calling his client was the path of practical wisdom. She represented income. How could curiosity about what was going on in Cy’s office compete with that? But Tuttle had extensive and inaccurate knowledge of the hunches that had led to the great breakthroughs in science, in the arts, in sports. Playing his hunch, he waited until he saw Vivian go by on the way to her office, pushing her machine. A minute later he followed.

  Vivian looked at him suspiciously when he came into her office, where she was hooking up her machine, doubtless getting ready to transcribe what she had taken down in Horvath’s office.

  “Who is he?”

  She tipped her head to one side and pursed her mouth.

  “The man whose deposition you took down.”

  “It wasn’t a deposition. He just told a long story. Most of it sounded like bull to me, not that I listened very carefully.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Flanagan.” Vivian brightened. An Irish name.

  “I know Flanagans. I never saw him before.”

  “He’s been away.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  Vivian had to check. “Wallace.”

  Tuttle laughed.

  “It’s a perfectly ordinary name.”

  Vivian and Peanuts made a pair, a pair of deuces. It was pretty obvious that Vivian had no idea how impossible what she was saying was. He wanted to tell her that Wally Flanagan was dead. No doubt this guy was an impostor hoping to benefit from recent events. He thanked Vivian and left.

  For the second time that day, he ran into Peanuts in the rotunda.

  “You wanted to know what’s going on. Wally Flanagan is back,” Peanuts said.

  “And Hazel is the queen of Romania.”

  Peanuts seemed undecided how to take this.

  “You got a car, Peanuts?”

  “Where we going?”

  “The Loop.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Friendship?”

  Peanuts seemed touched. He led the way to his car and, when they were settled in, said, “Is she really Roumanian?”

  * * *

  At the building, when Sandra asked him to come up, Tuttle left Ferret and Peanuts discussing Chinese restaurants in the locality. Unlike the elevator in the courthouse, this one rose silently and s
wiftly. Sandra was in her open doorway when he emerged from the elevator.

  “Have you heard?” she asked.

  “Tell me in your own words,” Tuttle said and breezed past her into the elegant apartment.

  “When I was visiting my father, Maud got a call from someone who said he was Wally Flanagan. She would remember him from the monastery. He wanted her help in breaking the news to his father.”

  Tuttle took off his tweed hat. “So you’ve already heard.”

  4

  The reappearance of Wally Flanagan occupied the attention of Phil Keegan and Cy Horvath, but Agnes Lamb’s thoughts were on the body that had been found in a Flanagan cement mixer and identified as Wally’s. She drove out to Flanagan Concrete. The whole area was fenced. She crossed the lot and went up the steps and into the reception area. There was no one behind the counter that cut the room in two, but there was a bell to ring. She rang it.

  From an inner office came the sound of a frantic voice. “What the hell do you mean they’re not ready? How long do they think we can drive around before we pour?”

  Whatever answer he got did not satisfy him. A loud expletive accompanied the slamming down of the phone. Agnes rang the bell again.

  “What!”

  She waited, and soon a man came out of the inner office and scowled at her.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Who are you?”

  She displayed her ID.

  He came to the counter, took it, and studied it, comparing her with the photograph. “You a parole officer?”

  “Are you on parole?”

  He thought about it, then smiled. “Frank Looney.” He thrust out his hand. “How can I help you?”

  “I want to ask you a few questions.”

  His phone was ringing. “Now?”

  “Go ahead, answer it.”

  “Thanks a lot.” She went around the counter and followed him into the office. The call brought good news, apparently. He turned from the desk and seemed surprised to see her there. “Have a seat. What’s it about?”

  “Murder.”

  He had been in the process of sitting down but paused in midair before dropping into his chair. “Murder?”

  “It’s an old case, of course, but now that Wally Flanagan has come back from the dead…”

  “What!”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  He hadn’t. She gave him a brief version.

  He listened with his mouth open, gripping the arms of his chair. “Jesus.”

  “It is sort of like Easter.”

  “You really mean it, Wally’s back?”

  “Which makes the body that was discovered here and identified as his a bit of a puzzle.”

  He was still stunned by the news that Wally had reappeared. Agnes remembered that Frank Looney was Wally’s cousin and Luke’s nephew. Maybe she should have been more subtle, but if he was surprised to hear of the reappearance, she was equally surprised that he hadn’t already known of it.

  “So what can you tell me?”

  “What can I tell you? Nothing new. You must have records on it. Why waste my time? Look, I want to call my uncle.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I mean I don’t have time to reminisce about a body found years ago.” He pulled the phone toward him and began punching numbers, then frowned at her and turned away.

  Had he expected her to go? Agnes didn’t like the thought that the unknown victim would end up as an unimportant footnote to Wally’s return.

  He had got through to his uncle. “Luke, what’s this about Wally?” Pause. “No, I hadn’t been told. What the hell’s the secret?” He looked over his shoulder at her, the phone pressed to his ear. “All right, all right.” Then, “What great news.” He sounded like a man who had been told the good news that those who had firebombed his house had been apprehended. An old Mad magazine joke. He hung up. He looked around the office as if he hadn’t noticed it for a while. Portrait of a man thinking. He stood.

  Agnes did not. She was remembering Luke’s irate visit to Robertson. “It sounds like a Pianone job.”

  This got his attention. “What are you talking about?”

  “The body in your cement mixer.”

  “For crying out loud.”

  “I wonder whose it was.”

  “Go dig it up and find out!”

  Not a bad idea. Agnes did get up then. He followed her through the door. There was a very large girl behind the counter now. She looked at Agnes, seemingly wondering how she had got into the inner office.

  “I have to leave, Myrtle,” Looney told her. “Everything’s under control. Call my cell phone if anything comes up.”

  “Yes, Frank.”

  Ah, the devoted receptionist, spending her days behind these dusty windows, entertaining fantasies about the moment her boss would look at her as if for the first time, and … Well, she would be difficult not to notice, size-wise.

  Frank Looney pushed through the door and outside. Belatedly he thought to hold it open for Agnes. He stood for a moment, looking around, surveying his little kingdom. He turned to her and tried to smile. “This hits me pretty hard, you know.”

  “Good news is like that.”

  He thought about it, then nodded, skipped down the steps, and headed for a dusty car.

  Agnes watched him go, then went back inside. “How long have you worked here, Myrtle?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  Again she got out her ID.

  “Ten years.”

  “Wow. You must have worked for Luke Flanagan.”

  “He hired me, yes. Frank kept me on when he took over.”

  “I didn’t realize he hadn’t heard about his cousin.”

  Neither had Myrtle. She listened, her blue eyes sparkling in their pouches.

  “No wonder he’s upset.”

  “How so?”

  “He has the job Luke wanted his son to have. But Wally thumbed his nose at the idea, and Luke let him, made him a rich man.”

  Did she think that Wally had returned to take over Flanagan Concrete? “So you’ve been here ten years.”

  “It’s a job.”

  “Is Frank married?”

  “Sure, to the business.” She pursed her mouth.

  “You must have been here when that body was found in the mixer.”

  She rolled her eyes. “To think it wasn’t Wally after all.”

  “I wonder who it was.”

  “I don’t. There are some things it’s wise not to wonder about.”

  “Did the Pianone deal fall through?”

  “Deal? There was no deal.”

  “Luke quashed it?”

  “Thank God. I’m not sure I would have stayed here if there was any connection between that family and Flanagan Concrete.”

  “I wonder if there wasn’t already a connection.”

  5

  Marco just looked at her stone-faced when he heard about Wally Flanagan.

  “I didn’t think he’d dare to come back,” Sylvia said. She studied the photograph that was captioned THE BEARDED PRODIGAL. “I like the beard.”

  Well, with her blond crew cut, Wally would find her different, too. Northern Minnesota was so long ago now that Sylvia could remember only the good part. At first it had been a vacation in a strangely beautiful place, the trees, the lake, the enormous sky above at night. Television reception was lousy, but that hadn’t mattered, at first. Wally was content to fish and read, and Sylvia just took it easy. There wasn’t much to do in the town where Sylvia did the shopping. For any excitement, you had to drive to Bemidji. Wally hadn’t wanted excitement. Besides, he didn’t want to run the risk of someone recognizing him, improbable as that was. Sylvia wondered if anyone else from the Chicago area was dumb enough to bury themselves in the woods of northern Minnesota.

  Sylvia had made a lot of shopping trips to town, just to get away. There was a bar, the Rainbow, on the road that ran along the lakefront; it was the local favorite,
always full of people, lots of fun. She could be gone for hours, and when she came back Wally seemed hardly to have noticed she’d been away.

  “We’re not staying for the winter, are we?”

  “Sylvia, this is home now.”

  “Ask someone what winter is like here.”

  “It can’t be any nicer than the other seasons.”

  “Wally, they have snow up to their gazoo. We’ll be stranded here.”

  If she had thought it was temporary, he clearly regarded it as permanent. It became a constant theme.

  “God, how I nagged him.”

  * * *

  Marco grunted. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

  “You did not. You never say a word.”

  “You might do likewise.”

  “Whose body was it?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  * * *

  The afternoon she met Greg Packer in the Rainbow, winter had come and gone too many times. He squeezed in next to her. “Hi.”

  “I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “I just got here.”

  “From where?”

  “How’s Wally?”

  “Who’s Wally?” Her first thought was Now we’ll have to get out of here. Someone knows who he is.

  “We grew up together.”

  They moved to a table. He was a good-looking guy, but he didn’t seem as old as Wally. Boyish. How had he known where Wally was?

  “We came up here one summer when we were kids. Well, eighteen, nineteen. Hitchhiked all the way. It’s where I would have headed if I wanted to disappear.”

  So she took him back to the cabin, leading the way, keeping an eye on him in the rearview mirror to make sure he made the turns. At the cabin, she waited beside her car until he got out of his, then led him inside.

  “Surprise!”

  Wally was in his Barcalounger in what he called the supine position, a book on his belly. He didn’t seem at all surprised. “Greg.” He put out his hand. “Welcome to the woods.”

  There were times when Sylvia wondered how accidental Greg’s arrival was. She could imagine Wally summoning his old friend to take her off his hands. If that was the plan, it worked. With Greg settled in at the cabin, Sylvia had someone to do things with.

  When Wally left, it wasn’t jealousy; he was as tired of Greg as he was of her. They were like kids after he left and had a whee of a time. Once there was nothing to prevent her from getting out of the woods, she found herself liking it there, or at least not hating it as she had. It was later, when she and Greg had returned to Fox River, that it became clear that Wally’s departure had been part of an agreement. Greg was curious about her money, no doubt about that, but he had money, too. From Wally.