The Rosary Murders
Page 32
“Maybe three or four times a month, I don’t know. But, Father, I need help!”
“Do you have any other sins to confess besides all those bad confessions for all these years?”
“No, I don’t think so, but…”
“Do you have a rosary?”
“Yes, but…”
“Say the rosary once for your penance, and CUT IT OUT!”
Danaher droned into the Latin formula for absolution. The penitent sobbed quietly.
Outside the confessional, the man listlessly ran the beads through his fingers for several minutes. Suddenly, he stood, and shouted, “I need help ... I don’t need the goddam rosary!”
He flung the beads in the direction of the sanctuary, and ran out into the night.
Gratitude for technical advice to Margaret Cronyn, editor of The Michigan Catholic; Jim Grace, detective with the Kalamazoo Police Department; and Kim Rezin Knight, R.N.
For Fiona, the sine qua non.
The Rosary Murders copyright © 1979, 2012 by Gopits, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
an Andrews McMeel Universal company,
1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106
ISBN: 978-1-4494-2476-3
www.andrewsmcmeel.com
William X. Kienzle died in December 2001. He was a Detroit parish priest for twenty years before leaving the priesthood. He began writing his popular mystery series after serving as an editor and director at the Center for Contemplative Studies at the University of Dallas.
The Father Koesler Mysteries
1. The Rosary Murders
2. Death Wears a Red Hat
3. Mind Over Murder
4. Assault with Intent
5. Shadow of Death
6. Kill and Tell
7. Sudden Death
8. Deathbed
9. Deadline for a Critic
10. Marked for Murder
11. Eminence
12. Masquerade
13. Chameleon
14. Body Count
15. Dead Wrong
16. Bishop as Pawn
17. Call No Man Father
18. Requiem for Moses
19. The Man Who Loved God
20. The Greatest Evil
21. No Greater Love
22. Till Death
23. The Sacrifice
24. The Gathering
Here is a special preview of
Death Wears a Red Hat
The Father Koesler Mysteries: Book 2
“Shut up! you’re in the cathedral!”
Mrs. Landry swatted her daughter Lucy’s arm in a distracted gesture. Lucy, nine years old, had been blissfully humming her way through the terminal stages of liturgically induced boredom. The two were attending an adult confirmation ceremony at Blessed Sacrament. Lucy’s father, Mrs. Landry’s husband, was being confirmed as a Roman Catholic, having been received only recently into that faith.
In the loft, the members of the choir were killing time between hymns with casual conversation, reading or absently gazing down into the body of the church, where long lines of men and women, with their sponsors, each waited for their thirty-second sacramental encounter with the bishop. The lines were moving, but almost imperceptibly.
Bishop Art Kenny, the confirming prelate, may have held the world’s record for prolonged confirmations. There were no stats for this sort of thing. The interminableness of Bishop Kenny’s confirmations was due entirely to the fact that he refused to confirm an unsmiling candidate. He made no secret of this. In his introductory remarks before each ceremony, he always explained in great detail that confirmation was a joyous occasion and that he would therefore not confirm anyone who was not smiling.
This approach was offset by the reluctance, particularly on the part of Catholic laity, to smile in church. Thus, with nearly every candidate there was an additional monologue.
“Now, you know,” His Excellency would say, giving a good example by smiling himself, “that I am not going to confirm you until you smile. So, relax, and give us a big smile for Jesus.”
Generally, that was enough to elicit at least the kind of smile found on drivers’ licenses. Which was enough for the bishop. Which was just fine with the attendant priests, who wanted, more than anything, to get this over and relax at the end of a demanding Sunday.
Priestly attendance at cathedral confirmations was not obligatory. But ordinarily, if anyone from any of the other parishes was being confirmed, at least one of that parish’s priests would attend. And attendance usually meant participation.
Priestly participation in a confirmation ceremony involved either reading, pushing, or wiping. Readers stood at either side of the bishop, took from between the fingers of the confirmandi the card whereon the new name selected for this occasion was typed, and read that name aloud. Which name was then incorporated into the ceremony by the bishop, as, for instance, “John, I sign you with the sign of the cross and confirm you with the chrism of salvation. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Pushers stood at the foot of the altar steps on either side of the line of candidates. It was the pusher’s job to guide—not push—the candidate up the steps and into a kneeling position within anointing distance of the bishop.
There were normally four wipers, operating in pairs. As each freshly confirmed candidate approached, the wiper located and wiped off the small dab of oil the bishop had traced on that person’s forehead. Standing near the wipers were altar boys, each holding two small baskets, one containing clean cotton balls, the other a receptacle for used cotton.
Of all tasks, that of the wipers allowed the most opportunity for conversation. Usually, they engaged in small talk, mainly to stay awake.
Fathers Patrick McNiff and Alfred Dalton had managed to position themselves farther from the altar than the other wipers. Thus, bothered with fewer foreheads, they had more time to talk.
“Did you hear what happened to Archbishop Boyle last week?” McNiff deposited an oily wad of cotton in the used-ball basket.
“Somebody picketing the Palmer Park mansion again?” Dalton balanced a cotton ball on the tip of his index finger.
“No, it was at a confirmation at St. Kevin’s. Everything started okay. They had the procession and all. But while the Arch was facing the congregation, praying from the ritual, hands outstretched, this little altar boy gets confused, forgets there are going to be readings, and removes the chair from behind the Arch.”
“You don’t mean—” Dalton was reluctant to dare hope that the worst had happened.
“Yes.” McNiff’s eyes betrayed joyful gratitude that this had not happened at St. Mary Magdalen, his benefice. “The Arch sat down—all the way down to the floor.”
Dalton strangled a guffaw. “If the people in that parish had been smart, at that moment everybody in the church would’ve sat down on the floor.”
Lucy Landry could scarcely remember ever having been this bored. The choir was nice when it sang, but that was infrequently. Meanwhile, there was just the tedium of shuffling feet and periodic coughs. Lucy had long finished counting the pillars and windows.
She nudged her mother. “What’s that?” She pointed to a spot of brilliant red suspended from the high ceiling directly over the main altar.
Mrs. Landry squinted, her eyes trying to focus on the distant object. “Oh, that’s the Cardinal’s hat.”
“What’s it doing on the ceiling?”
“All Cardinals used to be given a hat like that when they became Cardinals.” Mrs. Landry sighed. “That one was given to Cardinal Mooney when Pope Pius made him a Cardinal.”
“When did he wear it?”
“Never. It’s too big and heavy to wear. A picture of it goes on the Cardinal’s coat of arms. Then, when the Cardinal dies, they hang his hat from the
ceiling of the cathedral.”
“Why?”
“Read your prayer book.” Mrs. Landry concluded the dialogue she considered pointless.
The two priests between Fathers McNiff and Dalton and the altar ran out of cotton. Rather than sending for a new supply, they retired to the large sacristy to rest weary bones and perhaps snatch a smoke.
And so, business had more than doubled for McNiff and Dalton, who, by this time, were so deeply committed to their conversation that their ministrations had become increasingly perfunctory. Wiping foreheads distractedly, they frequently missed the oil spot entirely.
“Actually, that’s kind of nice, the way Kenny makes people smile while they’re being confirmed.” Dalton, tall, balding, older than his classmates due to time spent in the Navy during World War II, was pastor of St. Rita’s on Detroit’s east side.
“He may resemble a TV game show host at confirmations, but you should’ve seen him at my place last month. He raised some kind of hell.” McNiff, short, paunchy, silver-haired and black-browed, was a pastor in Melvindale, a western suburb of Detroit.
“What happened?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?” In his eagerness to tell the story, McNiff missed several oil spots. “Well, first, you may have heard that we got this new $75,000 altar from Italy—”
“Yeah, carved out of one solid block of marble, wasn’t it?”
“Yup. And that’s the point. Or part of it. It’s got a huge tabletop, must be four-by-ten feet. Then it slopes down, very graceful-like, to a single, small base.”
“Hey, wait a minute, Haven’t you got a problem without four posts, one at each corner?”
“That’s it!” McNiff almost yelled, warming to his righteous wrath. “The chancery says if it doesn’t have four legs, one at each corner, it can’t be a permanent altar!”
“Canonically portable!”
“Canonically portable, hell! I’d like to see one of those chancery dudes try to move it. Must weigh five, six tons.”
“Whoever tried to move it would become Chinese.”
“Chinese?”
“Yeah, One-Hung-Low.” Dalton laughed alone.
McNiff overlooked the attempt at humor. “Then you know what they made me do?”
“What?” Dalton shook his head as he pounded a cotton ball against a forehead. It was a clear case of overblot.
“Since it’s not a permanent altar, they made me have a piece cut out of the central tabletop for a twelve-inch square altar stone.”
“No!”
“Yes! And then the stupid janitor cuts out an exact twelve-inch square, one-inch deep hole. So when his nibs Kenny comes to bless the new altar, he puts some cement in the hole, then puts the altar stone in the hole, and, of course, since the hole was cut for the stone and no allowance was made for the cement, the stone sticks up above the surface about a quarter of an inch. If you set a chalice down and hit the edge of the stone, the chalice’ll tip over.”
“No!”
“Yes. And when Kenny gets done and starts to leave, I pick up the hammer and go to give it a good whack to try to settle it in. And Kenny turns around and sees me and says, ‘Don’t touch that!’”
“But if the stone won’t fit in the altar because of the cement, what good would it do to whack it?”
“I could do it!”
Suddenly, the monotony was shattered by a series of shrieks that would not stop.
Lucy Landry, her eyes widened in genuine horror, was screaming uncontrollably. Head tilted, she was pointing at the ceiling.
Mrs. Landry, sensing her daughter’s terror was unfeigned, clutched the child closely as her eyes followed in the direction of the girl’s outstretched finger.
Shortly, many in the cathedral joined in the pointing and the screaming.
Ushers and priests instinctively tried to restore calm and order. But it was clear to anyone with halfway decent eyesight that tucked firmly inside the crown of Cardinal Mooney’s big red hat hanging from the lofty cathedral ceiling was a human head.