Prodigal Father

by Ralph McInerny

  “Do you golf?”

  “You could teach me.”

  Midafternoon found them at the practice range, Leo full of theory and hands-on instruction. She backed into him as he positioned her hands on the club. His breath was hot and eager in her ear. Would he believe that she was a vestal virgin? Doubtless he was equally inexperienced. Mrs. Leo Corbett. She tried it out in her mind, but what she saw was the map in Lars’s office, with the huge unbuilt-upon expanse that had been Maurice Corbett’s seigneurial domain. They would keep the original estate and sell off the rest to Lars and live as high on the hog as one could get.

  “Why don’t we go to my place?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t want you to see mine.”

  Of course, she knew where he lived. On the drive to her condo on the North Shore he vented his resentment against fate and she gave ear as only a designing woman can.

  “I blame my father as much as my grandfather,” he said.

  “There is plenty of blame to go around. Why did you choose Tuttle as your lawyer?”

  “What does ‘choose’ mean when you have only one possibility?”

  “Leo, we could have our pick of lawyers.”

  The significance of the third-person plural did not escape him. She bumped against him as they crossed the parking garage to the elevator. She almost felt sorry for him.

  The rites of initiation are seldom unique. In her apartment, she plied Leo with more drink, later she went into her bedroom and disencumbered herself of her street clothes. She was wearing a black peignoir when she called to him.

  “Leo, could you come in here?”

  She had pulled the blinds but only to a point where a sufficency of light came through. He stood in the doorway, unable to see clearly at first. When he could, she undid her peignoir and let it slip to the floor. There was an agonizing moment when she feared he would bolt for the door. Then he lunged for her. Like an operation under sedation, it seemed over before it began.

  Post coitum, business. She explained to him, keeping any touch of treachery from her voice, that she did not want to see Lars Anderson take advantage of him. She ran her fingers over his hairless chest. “Leo, you are in the driver’s seat.”

  And barely awake. She slid down in the bed, and brought his sleepy head to her bosom and rocked him gently. She was confident now that she could carry her point with Leo Corbett.

  He slept for three hours. When he awoke, the blinds were opened, she was dressed and had coffee on. In the interval, she had thought of herself in bed with Leo and tried to discern some fundamental attitude toward what she had done. She had acted out of blatant self-interest, but Leo was so naive she felt the need to look after him. The carnal solace she had given him, the first gift of herself, in retrospect no longer seemed a mere investment. Charlotte was now of a mind that she could truly like Leo. But the first order of business was legal representation.

  “Tuttle is a clown, Leo. We are up against Amos Cadbury, the best there is in Fox River. And as the lawyer who drew up the deed of transfer of the estate, and wrote your grandfather’s will, he is deeply involved in the outcome. He will fight to the death to sustain your grandfather’s will.”

  Leo followed this docilely. She was the teacher, he was the student. Her few years with Lars Anderson had taught her much about the way things were done in the real world.

  “So what do we do?”

  She could have hugged him for that “we,” and she did. “I could talk to Amos Cadbury.”

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  “As your friend and advisor.”

  “What about Anderson?”

  “What about him?”

  In the ensuing silence, she could almost hear the gears of his mind turn.

  “It’s just you and me?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  She turned into his arms and lifted her face. Anderson was ruthless, but there were weapons he did not possess.

  “So what would you say to Cadbury?”

  “No lawyer wants to go to court. What we want is a compromise.”

  Leo bristled. “He won’t. Tuttle said …”

  “Forget Tuttle.” She ran a finger along his pouting lower lip. “I don’t say that Cadbury would be immediately forthcoming. The idea has to be put into his mind first. Men like to decide for themselves.” A mistake, that, but he seemed not to notice. She outlined for him the approach she would take with Cadbury. If that didn’t work, they would see about lawyers.

  “I’ll have to tell Tuttle.”

  “Would it be easier if I did?”

  “Would you?”

  “If you want.”

  So that was settled. She liked his loyalty to Tuttle. Maybe she should have been less ruthless about dumping the clownish layer. She did not want Leo’s sense of loyalty to be attenuated.

  “Maybe we can keep Tuttle on, in some capacity.”

  Leo liked that.

  “After all, he took you on when others might not have.”

  “I met him in the courthouse.”

  “I’ll call at his office.”

  He squeezed her. She squeezed back. She was beginning to like Leo. And it didn’t hurt to imagine Lars Anderson’s reaction when he realized he would have to deal with his former administrative assistant in the matter of the Corbett estate.

  “I should get home.”

  “Leo, I wanted to cook for you.”

  “I live on pasta and microwave dinners.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He saw the wisdom of staying the night with her. The following day, she suggested he move in. Why should they keep two places? It was all so easy that again she felt pity for Leo, but what ground was there for pity if they were going to be a team?

  “I’m so glad I never married,” she whispered later that night, snuggled up with Leo in her no longer virginal bed.

  “Me, too.”

  In the morning, she left him there and in her car called Lars on her cell phone.

  “Everything’s going according to plan,” she said.

  “What’s the plan?”

  She giggled for an answer, hung up, and continued on her way to Tuttle’s office. Leo had said the little lawyer had met with Cadbury, and Charlotte wanted to be briefed on that. But second thoughts arrived. Tuttle was already out of the picture, even if neither he nor Leo realized it. Coolness is all, as Shakespeare did not say. She drove instead to the office where she administratively assisted the great Lars Anderson.

  “I’d like to see the Corbett boy again, Charlotte.”

  The boy had become a man since Lars had last seen him and she had become a woman. It was surprising how little difference it seemed to make, one more move in a game that was slowly revealing itself. An hour later, she called Amos Cadbury’s office and asked to see him the following day.

  “And who should I say wishes to see him.”

  She repeated her name, then added, “I am Lars Anderson’s administrative assistant.”

  A pause while this registered. “Would two this afternoon be convenient?”

  “Perfectly. Thank you.”

  She would jettison Tuttle only after she talked with Cadbury.

  7

  The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile.

  —Psalm 94

  Cy Horvath went out to St. Hilary’s to talk with Edna Hospers about the flown Stanley Morgan when he remembered that Morgan had taken Edna and her kids to a Cubs game. But he was intercepted on the walk by Marie Murkin when he was on his way from his car to the school.

  “Lieutenant Horvath, is it true that you suspect Stanley Morgan of this dreadful murder of Father Nathaniel?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “What a question.”

  “He seems to have run away.”

  “Who can blame him? Innocence didn’t save him before.”

  “He made quite an impression on you.”

  “I pride myself on being a judge of character, Cyril Horvath.”<
br />
  “You seem to have a bad judgment of mine.”

  “Only as a policeman.”

  “Have you any idea where he might have gone? As a judge of character?”

  She adopted a tragic look and shook her head. “I wish you would forget about him and start looking for the real murderer.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “I could recite several plausible names. Father Nathaniel had a knack for antagonizing everyone.”

  “But as you know, Morgan says he went to jail because of Nathaniel.”

  She let him go then. Surely Father Dowling would not question the reasonableness of wanting to find Stanley Morgan and ask him a few questions. But as he continued to the school, he wondered if Edna Hospers would also have taken the part of the skedaddled Californian.

  Every time he entered the Senior Center and saw the old gents and ladies whiling away their day, he wondered if he and his wife would end up there in their old age. But he doubted that any of the people there now had imagined this future for themselves. He had to admit they seemed happy enough. Maybe they didn’t think of these as their twilight years, just today, to be followed by tomorrow, the way it had always been. A cry went up from a bridge table, triumph in the afternoon. He headed for the stairs and went up to Edna’s office.

  “Got a minute?” he asked, looking in the door.

  She actually jumped. “Lieutenant Horvath!”

  “That’s me. I was just wondering if I might end up downstairs after I’m pensioned off.”

  “That will be a long time from now.”

  “Care if I sit?”

  She waved grandly at the chair and pushed herself backward in her own chair.

  “Have you heard about the murder of Father Nathaniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember the guy who came here looking for some priest he said he’d known in California, some ex-priest?”

  “You mean Stanley Morgan.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He took me and the kids to a ball game.”

  “Here’s the funny thing, Edna. It looks like the priest he was looking for was one of the Athanasians. Actually, Father Nathaniel, as they’re now calling him again. Stanley Morgan went over there and under another name said he wanted to make a retreat. He was staying there in the lodge when all this happened.”

  “You think he killed that priest?”

  “I don’t know. I want to talk to him. But I can’t. He’s disappeared.”

  Edna had her hands flat on her desktop and looked at him with an expectant expression.

  “You probably got to know the guy better than anyone else did, going to the ball game and everything. Is there anything you can tell me that would be of any help?”

  Her chin angled up, her head cocked left, she gave it some thought. She shook her head. “I don’t know what it would be. You don’t spend a lot of time at the ball game talking.”

  Cy stood. “Well, this is just a long shot, of course. But we don’t have much to go on. I wonder if he might try to get in touch with Marie Murkin.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “He’s on the run, Edna. I don’t think he just stepped out to go to the drugstore. He packed and left. He’s gone. So where might he go? I understand he hit it off with Marie Murkin.”

  “Then you should be having this conversation with her.”

  “I tried to. She thinks we’re persecuting this nice man who had tea with her in the kitchen. With his record, he’s going to know we’ll be looking for him …”

  “His record?”

  “He did some soft time in California for some kind of financial fraud. Didn’t you know that?”

  Edna had stood, too, and seemed to have bristled at what Cy said. “I guess I did.”

  “Anyway, he could come here. Stupid, sure, but if he’s our man he’s running scared. I didn’t want to alarm Marie—I don’t think she would have listened to me anyway. What I’m asking is, keep an eye out, will you? He’s got to be somewhere.”

  Edna nodded and then said, “Just call you at police headquarters?”

  Cy fished out a card. “My cell phone number is on there. Try that first.”

  Down the stairs, another pause at the door of the former gym, looking in at the old people, making sure they were all old people, and then out to his car where he sat thinking for several minutes and then pulled away.

  “Was that a cop?”

  Edna had waited for Lieutenant Horvath to pull away, counted to ten, and then went up to the third floor. She nodded to Morgan’s question.

  “He expects you to come here.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “He thinks you’ll go to the rectory, to Marie Murkin.”

  He shook his head. “Too risky. So is being here. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Now that you’re here, you’d better stay. You wouldn’t get far if you tried to leave town.”

  He seemed to sink into himself. “You’re right. And now they’ll be watching this place.”

  She stayed with him, he seemed so forlorn, even if she was worried about being away from her office. If someone called, they would assume she had gone downstairs.

  “You have a car, don’t you?”

  “Stanley, I can’t let you take my car.”

  “You could say it was stolen.”

  Suddenly he scrambled to his feet, his eyes looking wildly past her. Cy Horvath stood in the doorway.

  “Stanley Morgan?” He showed his identification. “My car is downstairs. Why don’t you and I just walk down together and go out to the car. No need to alarm anyone. All right?”

  Edna’s heart nearly broke as she saw the dejected resignation on Stanley’s face. But then, he suddenly brightened.

  “Good idea. Let’s go.”

  Edna stood at the head of the stairs, watching the two men go down, the cop and the criminal, the man she had offered asylum to. Cy Horvath hadn’t said a word to her.

  8

  I will make your name to be remembered in all generations.

  —Psalm 45

  The arrest of Stanley Morgan was good news, of course, but it did not set Amos Cadbury’s mind at rest. In the narrow perspective of his present professional interest—the defense of the will of Maurice Corbett, as well as the deed of transferal of his estate to the Athanasians—the tragic death of Father Nathaniel was merely an incident. An aggravating incident, to be sure, since it put a bloody exclamation point to the scurrilous newspaper account of the recent history of the Order. How pathetic a band the community had seemed, a mere remnant of what had once been a thriving Order and an important factor within the local community. Now those vast grounds and buildings accommodated seven old men while the grandson of the man who had turned his estate over to them was all but destitute. “Is this justice? Is this fairness? Or, to put it in a more appropriate key, is this Christian charity?” Thus wrote Tetzel in the Fox River Tribune in his culminating story on the plight of poor Leo Corbett. And Amos Cadbury detected the hand of the ineffable Tuttle behind this campaign.

  How differently a lawyer concerned for the good of his client would have proceeded. Approached properly, Amos might have joined in a petition to make some suitable provision for the grandson. If that had been done, if a favorable judgment had been given, Leo Corbett would accept it and render himself harmless in the future. That is the kind of solution a lawyer looks for, with everyone getting something, no big winner, no big loser, equity. But Tuttle had engineered a scorched-earth policy indicating his client was going for all or nothing. And, of course, what he would receive was nothing.

  It was in this mood that Amos was told that a Miss Charlotte Priebe would be gratified to have a few minutes of his time.

  “She is the administrative assistant of Lars Anderson,” Miss Nitti, his secretary, reminded him.

  With this little exchange as overture, Amos was not prepared for the very young lady who was shown in at two o’clock. He rose from his chair, as
he would have done for any client, particularly a woman, and for a moment found himself without words. Miss Nitti, as if sensing his surprise, chirped, “Miss Charlotte Priebe. Mr. Cadbury.”

  She came right to the desk and extended her hand. “I am the administrative assistant of Lars Anderson.”

  “Please, sit down.”

  She sat. “As you know, Mr. Anderson very much wants, for purposes of development, property which is covered by the will and recorded wishes of a client of yours.”

  “A departed client.”

  “But his will and wishes are very much present. In order for Mr. Anderson to do what he wants to do, he would have to break that will.” She paused. “I don’t think that would be possible, given your reputation.”

  “It is not a matter of reputation, Miss Priebe, but of the law.”

  “Of course. But you will agree that a case can be made for the other side.”

  “Mr. Anderson’s side?” A small smile was Amos Cadbury’s comment on that.

  “Not quite.”

  She let a short silence develop. Very effective. Amos was not insensible to the attractiveness of his visitor, although the assaults of concupiscence had long since lost their sting. She was quite pretty, somewhat severely dressed in a suit under which there seemed to be no blouse. But it was her intelligence that was most apparent in her manner and in her way of speaking.

  “I subscribe to the belief that half a loaf is better than none. Or even a slice or two of the bread.”

  “Go on.”

  “Since Mr. Anderson would surely lose everything if he sought to obtain everything, the question arises as to whether some compromise might be reached.”

  “As a matter of conjecture?”

  “As a matter of conjecture.”

  “Are you a lawyer, Miss Priebe?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You would make a very good one.”

  “It’s kind of you to say so. But not all lawyers are like yourself.”

  “And I daresay not all administrative assistants are like yourself.”

  “I would not like to be a lawyer like Mr. Tuttle.”

  “Indeed not. One Tuttle is more than the profession can abide. It is because of Tuttle and the slanderous publicity campaign he has engineered through the press, that your visit comes too late. Total war has been declared, it matters little by whom.”