It quickly became evident to Koesler that he was the only one who understood their connection. But the time had obviously come for them to know.
“You,” he pointed at Angela, “are “The Suburban Woman.’
“And you,” he indicated Harry, “are ‘The Utility Official.’
“You,” Neiss, “are ‘The Suburban Priest.’
“You,” Shanley, “are ‘The Urban Priest.’
“You,” Pat, “are ‘The Paper Woman.’”
“And I,” Lee Brand stepped out from behind a room divider, “am ‘The Money Man.’”
The five continued to look at each other blankly.
Sudden comprehension reached Pat first. “We’re the suspects!” She was almost squealing. “We’re the suspects in The Case of the Missing Monsignor! This is a party for the suspects.’” She shook her head. “Isn’t this the damndest thing!”
“That is correct, Ms. Lennon,” said Brand. “And thank you all for coming. Now, won’t you all be seated? You’ll find place cards at the table.”
And so they did. Their names were engraved on cards shaped like a monsignor’s biretta.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Brand said as they seated themselves, “I ordered for everyone.”
Nobody objected to surf and turf.
“I think you’ll like the wine,” Brand continued as the sommelier presented him the cork. “It is Montrachet by La Romanée-Conti ’64, a white Burgundy that should assist both viands.” Brand smiled at the cork and tasted the wine. “And,” he nodded approvingly at the sommelier, “it is properly chilled.”
Kirwan knew enough about wine to realize this Montrachet would go for a couple of hundred dollars per bottle. He was impressed.
Conversation remained stilted at best. Only Brand seemed entirely at ease.
About halfway through the meal, Pat Lennon suddenly looked across the table at Father Koesler. “Wait a minute; you’re not one of us. You weren’t a suspect. What are you doing here?”
“I expect Mr. Brand will let us know all the answers in his own good time.” Koesler sipped the wine. It was nectar.
Brand’s own good time came during the sherbet course.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” Brand stood. His guests continued eating, but fell silent and attentive. “I know we all have things to do today, even though it’s Sunday. So I thought I’d begin the proceedings now so the proceedings and banquet may end together.”
A bit formal, Koesler thought. There are only six guests. He sounds as if he’s addressing a Republican convention.
“As you know,” Brand commenced, “you share the distinction of having been suspects in the case of the strange disappearance of Monsignor Thompson. I am of your number. Father Koesler is the odd-man out. He is with us this afternoon because he was not only part of the investigation of this case,” Brand bowed in Koesler’s direction, “he solved it. And to the victor goes the spoils. Or, at least a very decent meal.”
Brand smiled. His guests, with the exception of Koesler, laughed politely. The priest was locked in a close study of his host.
“Since you all suffered varying degrees of inconvenience by being suspects in this case,” Brand continued, “I thought I owed you an explanation of just what happened.”
Showboating, an insufferable ego play, a touch of class? Koesler couldn’t decide.
“There was, in this drama we played out three weeks ago, a certain amount of luck and coincidence,” said Brand. “This was to be expected since coincidence is an integral part of life, just as ‘Isn’t it a small world?’ is a cliché, true because it is so often appropriate.
“Perhaps the fundamental coincidence is that all of us were mentioned in Monsignor’s diary.”
Brand turned to Pat Lennon. “This is, by the way, Ms. Lennon, off the record. Understood?”
Reluctantly, Pat nodded.
Brand smiled graciously and continued. “Your first question will undoubtedly concern the diary.
“As was the case with each of you, I had my problems with Monsignor Thompson. The Monsignor supposedly was expediting the marriage case of my daughter’s fiancé. However, as time went on, the Monsignor gave me more and more reason to doubt his sincerity—moreover, to doubt he was giving this case any special treatment at all. So I had some private investigators see what they could find out about the matter. It was rather simple for them. They were able to go through the Tribunal files several times.”
Mary Alberts’ messed-up files, thought Koesler.
“During one of these searches, one of my more inventive agents stumbled across the diary. Sensing there might be some use for this in the future, he photocopied each page and brought the package to me. Earlier diaries were never found. They may have been locked away in some secret archive. But, as we all know, the diary we were able to produce was packed with relevant dynamite.
“That diary became the skeleton on which I fleshed out my plan of taking Thompson on the cruise. All I had to do was get the contents of the diary into the public domain, so to speak, and I would have achieved two very vital things: I would create five instant suspects, and I would let the public know what kind of monster Thompson really was.
“So, when Monsignor Thompson came to join me on the Alaskan Queen, it was a simple matter to have the diary transferred to his desk in the rectory, where it would be quickly found. We were prepared to tip both News and Free Press as to its existence and whereabouts Monday morning, before the investigation began, and let the reporters vie for it. But, as it happened, Joe Cox found it Sunday afternoon. For our purposes, that worked just as well.
“Once the diary was found, all of us became suspects.
“I did not much care what you all did through the week of the fifth while I put my plan into preparation and action. I wouldn’t need you until the night of the eleventh when Thompson would be at the wedding reception, and my plan would begin.”
Angela remembered what she had done during the week of the fifth. She remembered both envisioning her plot and the moment she had called it off. Sunday morning, the fifth of August, she had seen, as on a movie screen, everything she would have to do. As if patterning herself after the movie, she had lived every step until the morning of the day she was to kill Thompson. For the first time, she realistically considered what it would take to hit a man with a board and knock him unconscious. She could not do it. She could never bring herself to physically assault another human being. It had been precisely that quality she had hated in her father. At that moment, she had called a halt to her plans. Then came that crazy phone call…
David Neiss recalled his daydream. Even in his own fantasies, he had been a blithering idiot. When he saw, in the daydream, where his own maladroitness could lead—to a dead instead of dead-drunk Monsignor—Neiss had been very careful at his parents’ home to ask detailed questions about the sleeping potion. But shortly after leaving his parents, he had realized the professional care needed for the administration of a dangerous drug. How could he tell how much the Monsignor would drink and how it would affect him? He could not abide bungling this and having it end as it had in his daydream. At that moment he had canceled his plan and called Peggy to tell her. Then came that crazy phone call.
Norman Shanley relived his canceled plan. He remembered his rationalizing the necessity for Thompson’s death. He had seen his friend at the crematorium and all still was well. But when he actually held the poison in his hand, he knew he could not go through with it. At that point, he simply terminated his plan. Perhaps there would be some other way of doing something about Thompson. Although, before his disappearance, Shanley could not think of one. Then there was that night when his buddy Bob Morell didn’t show up…
Harry Kirwan well remembered his plan. He had not had the slightest doubt that he could carry it out. Not until after he had visited the site of the new building and after he had purchased the sand and cement. Not until then did the realization strike that he would be unable to be at the site a
fter burying Thompson. And who knows what might have happened? The foreman might have noticed an unevenness and ordered that area dug out and repoured. Or the grave might have been uncovered by some workman’s mistake. Exigencies Kirwan could have obviated if he had been able to work at the site until the foundation was complete. But nothing could be protected in his absence. At the moment that realization had occurred to him, Kirwan had dropped the plan. Instead, he spent a quiet and delightful night with his wife.
Pat Lennon would never forget her activity during the week of the fifth. It was a week that had brought her closer to actually committing murder than she ever would have thought possible. It was not until after she had visited that deserted beach and her scheme evolved from speculation to the practical sphere that she knew she could never do it. Unlike her fantasy, wherein Thompson merely slipped beneath the surface of Lake Huron and his death seemed somehow utterly beyond her responsibility, in reality, she, of course, would be directly responsible for his death. In reality, she might even have to actually hold his head under water. To actually kill him. Involuntarily, she shivered whenever the plot reoccurred to her. She had, indeed, checked out a News staff car for the eleventh, intending to cover the Port Huron weekend resort story. But when she got the phone call about the drug story—which proved bogus— she had decided to postpone the Port Huron trip to Sunday instead of Saturday night. She had not wondered much about the phone call. It was by no means the only false alarm she’d ever received. She regretted only the cold she had caught.
“By the way, folks,” Brand continued, “I feel I have two things for which to apologize to you. And one is more egregious than the other.” He looked more charming than contrite. “My first apology is, of course, for revealing the contents of Thompson’s diary. While I was certain the news media would not dare disclose your identities, you were subjected to a police investigation, and I apologize for that.
“But more, I apologize for taking from all but one of you your alibis for the eleventh. Mr. Kirwan, of course, I did not even know you would be on the list, so I did nothing to try to take away your alibi. But Mrs. Cicero and Father Neiss, I’m afraid my agents were responsible for your wild goose chases.
“And Ms. Lennon, I’m afraid the same is true regarding your missing drug source. With you, Father Shanley, it was not a case of getting you out of your residence as it was with the others. We had to find a way to keep you home. Once we discovered you had a date with Father Morell, we arranged for the long-winded visitor to your friend, as well as putting your telephone temporarily out of order.”
Cicero, Neiss, Shanley, and Lennon silently weighed whether Brand’s apology and even this expensive feast were worth their inconvenience. When each added the revelation of Monsignor Thompson’s darker side made possible at least partially through their inconvenience, each felt prone to forgive—or at least to hold no grudge.
“A question, if one is permitted, Mr. Brand?” Kirwan asked. Brand smiled and nodded. “Thompson’s car; why was it parked at De La Salle?”
“Good question—and another odd coincidence.
“We flew Thompson to San Francisco from Detroit City Airport. I took it for granted that Thompson would park at the airport. I had men there who were to move the car from the airport parking lot. I didn’t want his disappearance to be linked with air travel. But Thompson saved us that trouble by deciding to leave his car at De La Salle. He thought it would be safer there.”
Brand smiled at the memory. There was appreciative but nervous laughter from all but Koesler.
“And,” Brand continued, “when he found blood, he wiped the car clean of prints. He couldn’t have helped more if he’d been working for me. By the way, he was able to take his pistol with him—he didn’t trust me much—because he was traveling by private plane, then cruise ship.
“Which reminds me: I was puzzled when I heard about the empty cartridge found in his car. Some circumspect questioning revealed that Thompson himself had fired that shell. The fool took a potshot at a pheasant while waiting for a funeral at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. He had wondered what happened to the casing but never did find it.”
“Another question, Mr. Brand,” said Lennon. “If Thompson trusted you so little he brought along his gun, what made him trust you to arrange for his leave of absence from the diocese?”
“Oh, I don’t think he did. But my phone call Saturday was too late for him to reach anybody at the Chancery, nor would he have needed to; after all, he had no obligations until noon Mass Sunday at Shrine. I’m sure he would have phoned from Frisco were it not that he got a telegram from Monsignor Iming early Sunday telling him all was clear for him to be away for a couple of weeks. Of course,” he smiled slyly, “Monsignor Iming never sent such a telegram.”
“What’s going to happen to Monsignor Thompson now?” asked Angela Cicero of no one in particular.
Brand shrugged and turned his palms up. “I couldn’t care less. I’m done with him.”
“I believe he’s being sent to a Chicago seminary to teach canon law,” said Koesler, whose clerical gossip source was unimpeachable.
“He’s going to teach young men studying for the priesthood to be like him!” Father Neiss’s horrified reaction was instantaneous.
Silence fell on the group. One by one, after speaking a word or two with Brand, they left, undoubtedly retaining visions of their aborted plans, possibly each glad he or she hadn’t carried them out… but possibly wishing someone else had—or would.
Finally, only Brand and Koesler, along with a couple of waiters, remained.
“I guess you think you won, don’t you?” said Koesler.
“I don’t think I won,” said Brand, in instant ill humor; “I won! I did win! It’s just as Machiavelli said…”
Machiavelli, thought Koesler. Wouldn’t you know Machiavelli would be his patron saint!
“…‘Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.’”
“So you fear no vengeance?” asked Koesler.
“Not hardly. Not from Thompson.”
“There is another kind of vengeance, Mr. Brand. The way the Bible puts it, Vengeance is mine. I shall repay, saith the Lord.”
“So?”
“So I am not burning any candles for Monsignor Thompson.” Koesler spoke firmly. “But you managed to tear his reputation to shreds by using his diary. By using more his evil thoughts than his evil deeds. Even born-again Presidents admit they occasionally lust in their hearts.
“Monsignor Thompson may have run roughshod over a good many people by maladministering bad law. And that is something the Church should have been alert to and should have corrected. You might have been instrumental in effecting that kind of solution. But, Mr. Brand, you deliberately and completely destroyed the man’s reputation.”
For the first time, Koesler witnessed the storied deep vertical parallel lines forming in Brand’s forehead. He had to admit it was a threatening sight. But Koesler plowed forward in what he considered a priestly obligation.
“Mr. Brand, as a Catholic you must know that it is the teaching of our Church—your Church—that each person has a right to a good reputation whether such reputation is deserved or not, unless the person himself or herself publicly destroys that reputation. But you have taken it upon yourself to destroy a man’s reputation by innuendo and the revelation of his most private thoughts.
“Mr. Brand, I really don’t know if you won. I wonder if your act of vengeance is the final act of vengeance. Or whether the final act of vengeance is the one the Lord reserves to Himself. And whether the Lord’s vengeance may be directed at you. For the good of your soul, I urge you to consider this.”
“All right, now you listen to me!” Brand’s anger was impressive. He had been transformed from gracious host to snarling despot. “Nobody talks to me lik
e that! Nobody! And especially not you! I owed you one, Koesler, but this is it! We’re even! Never, never cross me again!” He flung down his napkin. “You may leave!”
Koesler shrugged and left.
During his drive back to St. Anselm’s, he continued to wonder what Brand had meant. What had Brand “owed” him? Finding Father Shanley for his daughter’s wedding? No; Brand had discovered Shanley without Koesler’s help. What could it be? Koesler sensed he would be pondering that remark for a long time.
He entered his office in the rectory. There was still a considerable pile of unopened mail on his desk. Testimony to the amount of time he had lately spent away on detached duty with the Detroit Police Department. He sat down and shuffled through the pile.
One rather bulky business-size envelope with the return address of the Tribunal caught his eye. What now?
The envelope contained the considerable but incomplete documentation Thompson had ordered Koesler to send regarding his parishioner’s petition for permission to separate. The covering letter was signed by Thompson. This, thought Koesler, must have been one of the last bits of Tribunal business for the Monsignor. Funny thing; Koesler no longer heard those three menacing Scarpia chords.
The letter read: Why did you send the Tribunal this documentation on a petition for permission to separate? It is incomplete.
Koesler threw back his head and laughed. “That it was incomplete is what I’ve been trying to tell you, you dumb bastards!” he said aloud to no one. Deacon Schroeder, in the living room, heard him. First running through the rectory near-naked, now this. Schroeder wondered if Koesler were coming unglued.
Oh, Tommy, Koesler thought; Chicago survived Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and Mayor Daley. What are you going to do to that toddlin’ town!
Then Koesler thought of Cardinal “Wild Bill” Hitchcock and his reputation for living high off the hog. Hitchcock and Thompson— they deserved each other. Wouldn’t it be odd if Tommy Thompson got his bishopric through Hitchcock? So that once more, Tommy Thompson, after the football game, could accompany the rich kids into the mansion.
Mind Over Murder Page 36