He looked beyond the fluttering ribbons to the statue of Mary. Had Nathaniel dragged himself here, mortally wounded, wanting to pray again that prayer that is repeated minute by minute all over the world. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. To say those words as one was dying, in ictu mortis, must give them an irresistible power. He would have liked to kneel and say that prayer for the repose of Nathaniel’s soul now, but the grotto had become the scene of a crime and he could not disturb it. So he whispered the prayer where he stood and then walked on in the direction of the lodge.
11
Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low.
—Psalm 142
Leo was not in her apartment when Charlotte returned from her meeting with Amos Cadbury. She called out his name when she shut the door and waited, expecting him to appear. “Ta-da,” she would say, allowing herself that little gesture of victory. Now she could move toward the next phase of the plan that seemed to have formed as if this were her moment of destiny. But where was Leo? She ran through the apartment, but she already knew that he was not there.
She made herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen counter. Coolness is all. She could not believe that her beautiful plan could go awry so easily. She had been so sure of Leo. She was sure of him. She called his apartment and listened to the funereal message, then hung up. No. She dialed the number again, took the phone from her ear when the message was repeated and at the sound of the beep said, “Leo, if you’re there, it’s Charlotte. Call.” She hung up and an hour went by and there was no call from Leo.
An omelet and a glass of white wine for dinner, then more waiting. She must begin to consider alternatives. Tuttle. She had to cut any ties Leo had with the lawyer lest he try to return to status quo ante. She left a message on Tuttle’s office phone.
“This is Charlotte Priebe. Mr. Leo Corbett wishes you to know that he has chosen other arrangements. Please send your bill to me, care of Anderson, Ltd. Thank you.”
She went to bed, where she had never felt so alone before. If Leo were here … She turned on her side, and crushed her cheek into the pillow, eyes wide open. Sleep came without warning, and dreams, strange dreams. She was walking on the campus of the University of Chicago, dressed as she dressed before she wearied of undergraduate imposture. She felt again the intensely sexual atmosphere of the alleged intellectual life, young people thirsty for adventure, some of them perhaps indulging, but for the most part it was a cerebral matter. Casual talk, knowing asides, virginal hearts. At least in her case. All that could wait. It was better to think of it as a great mystery just over the horizon for which she was not yet ready. Clarity of mind and a new direction of her studies intervened, and then she was too busy for adolescent chatter. On the campus walks then she might have been in disguise as she passed the clinging couples, bumping hips as they moved along, expressions of sedulous abandon on their faces. She was in a skirt, a young woman now, no longer a coed, and then she saw Leo Corbett coming toward her on the sidewalk, an unsure but pleading expression on his face. She woke to the sound of a buzzer. She sat up. The digital clock beside the bed said 3:00.
She scrambled from her bed and ran into the living room where she pressed the button on the intercom.
“Charlotte?”
“Leo.”
She pressed the door release and then waited as she was, her heart in her throat. She calmed herself. Of course he was back. Had she ever doubted it? A tapping on the door and she removed the chain, turned the lock, opened it. Leo stood there with clothing over one arm and a suitcase in his hand.
“I left my books in the trunk of the car.”
She pulled him inside and closed the door. “It’s three in the morning!”
“I told myself it was all a dream.”
She took the clothes from his arm and threw them on the couch and waited for him to take her in his arms.
“I need a shower.”
She smiled up at him. “So do I.”
But she gave him time to himself before she joined him. The clothes he had worn were rolled into a ball, the bathroom was full of steam. She could see him impressionistically through the glass door of the shower, his face lifted to the water. She opened the door and stepped in.
Later in bed, in his arms, she listened to his rambling account. He had moved out of his apartment, gotten everything into his car, and then … She waited.
“Charlotte, you are the first woman I ever …”
She put a finger to his lips. “I know. Was it worth waiting for?”
What a tiger he was. He gave the impression of being awkward, uncoordinated, weak, but she felt almost fear as he gathered her to him and crushed her against his chest. She felt a great tenderness for him, her ten-ton gorilla, her odd and fascinating man, with a head filled with lore in geological strata that had to be gone through layer by layer until she reached the level where he was the true grandson and heir of Maurice Corbett. He fell away and into a deep sleep and she lay beside him, thinking of his account of how he had driven aimlessly, unsure whether he should come to her, fearful that she would laugh away their time together and mock him for thinking it meant anything beyond itself. Now he was reassured.
In the morning, she prepared a gargantuan breakfast for him then sat to watch him eat. His eye was on the muted television, bringing in the news of the day. “Turn that up.”
It was the news of the murder of Father Nathaniel at the grotto of the Athanasian Order. The full significance of it did not strike her at first. She had sat there, waiting for the right moment to tell him of her visit to Amos Cadbury, wanting him to appreciate what she had done to advance his cause. Now, the scandal of the murdered priest was an unexpected boost.
“This will completely discredit them, Leo. That estate is yours.”
And then she told him that Amos Cadbury was in the mood to compromise. Leo could have the original estate and make a deal with Anderson as well. The media would be in full cry again. Tetzel and the others would get a second wind from the murder. On the screen, the activities at the Athanasians’ Marygrove were shown as background for the constant chatter of the reporter superimposed on it. A shot of the grotto, taped off, officials moving about, the camera zooming in on the prie-dieu where the body had been found by the groundskeeper. That the priest had been murdered at his prayers threatened to divert the accounts into a sympathetic vein, but then from the studio came a review of recent events, supporting the stories Tetzel had written for the Tribune. And then came still photographs. One of Maurice Corbett. While the long-dead gentleman looked out at Fox River viewers, the reporter spoke of the grandson, Leo, and how he had been cut off from his father’s wealth.
“I have to go to the office,” she told him.
“I’m still dead tired.”
“You can go back to bed. You deserve it.” She smiled. But first he wanted a blow by blow account of her meeting with Amos Cadbury. In retrospect the meeting seemed even more triumphal. Well, it had been a genuine coup, and Leo realized it. He sat on the couch, among the clothing she had flung there when he arrived, hands hanging between his knees, listening intently.
“If Tuttle had the sense to do this, you would not have needed me, Leo.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“I told him you had made other arrangements.”
“What did he say?”
“Does it matter?”
Only after she left Leo did the events of the day sink into Charlotte’s mind. Her first reaction had been right, but it seemed an inadequate appreciation of what a favorable turn the death of that priest was for Leo’s chances of coming into his inheritance. Of course, Lars was cognizant of what the murder of Father Nathaniel did to advance his own ambition to develop that choice property. Charlotte gave him a laundered version of her appointment with Amos Cadbury.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to see him.”
“It might have been a disaster.”
“But it wasn’t?”
>
“Anything but.”
“Charlotte, I will be very generous if this finally goes through.”
“It will.”
He liked it when she exhibited confidence because she never did unless it was justified. She might have felt duplicitous with Lars if she had not learned her skills from him. The promised bonus was his recognition that she had not acted simply for his benefit. The assumption was that everyone had his own interests primarily at heart. As in fact she did. But it seemed clear that there could be many winners here. There was no need for him to know that Leo was now her live-in lover. Even less need to let him know of the terrible hours she had spent not knowing where he was or if he had slipped from her hook. She rejected the image. Leo was more than a momentary instrument of her own designs. Allied with him, she would gain doubly from the success of Anderson’s project. If there was an apparent conflict of interest here, it did not jeopardize what each party wanted.
“You don’t think these events will change Cadbury’s attitude?”
“Why should they?”
“He is a prominent Catholic layman.”
“So?”
“Catholics are different from you and me, Charlotte. He could be affected in unexpected ways by the death of that priest. Have you ever heard of Father Roger Dowling?”
“Tell me about him.”
He was not, as she imagined, another Athanasian, but pastor of a local parish, a dear friend and advisor of Amos Cadbury. And close to the detective division of the local police.
“Do you think I should visit him?”
“I will leave that to you.”
Meaning he wasn’t sure that such a visit would be successful. Charlotte could not understand why Lars had mentioned Dowling, until he added, “He is, I understand, also very close to Father Boniface, the superior of the Athanasians.”
Charlotte nodded. Maybe talking with Father Dowling would serve some purpose.
12
Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us.
—Psalm 123
The sunglasses that Nathaniel had affected since returning to the community from California were found on the floor of the maintenance shed, beneath a fertilizer spreader where they had come to rest. This was taken to strengthen the likelihood that it had been in the shed that Nathaniel was attacked and that he had indeed stumbled in a grotesque final walk, an ax buried in his back, to the grotto where he fell on his knees and eventually died. There was a note of awe, even of reverence, in Phil Keegan’s voice as he told Father Dowling.
“Plus the fact that an effort had been made to clean up the shed. There had even been some hasty painting, but the lab found blood beneath it. Nathaniel’s blood.”
“Good Lord.”
“So it looks as if he wasn’t attacked when he was already at prayer.”
“The maintenance shed.”
“Andrew George sounded the alarm.”
Silence. Few people had a greater complaint against Nathaniel, given the prodigal priest’s campaign that the Athanasians give up their property.
“Sell all they have and give to the poor?” Phil said.
“If only it had been that simple. Nathaniel seems to have had something else in mind. Unless the members of the Order are to be counted among the poor.”
“Divide it among them?”
“It was when the others realized he had that in mind that the tide turned against him.”
“Imagine what each of them would have got!”
“They are all under the vow of poverty, Phil.”
“Then what are they doing living on that choice property?”
“You sound like Tetzel. When it was given to them it was almost as beautiful as it is now, but people weren’t clamoring to get hold of it then.”
The moment had arrived for Father Dowling to tell Phil what Father Boniface had confided in him. He had just returned from Marygrove when Phil arrived at the rectory.
Marygrove was yesterday’s news so far as the media were concerned and there was no sign of a police investigation under way. But it was clear that Father Boniface did not think his troubles were beginning to recede. He said what he had to say in a single passionate burst.
Andrew George had come to Boniface with what he himself realized was a damning revelation. “When I found the body, I ran to the maintenance shed to use the phone there.”
“And called me from there.”
“Yes.”
His next words were spoken with a sob. “Father, Michael was coming out of the shed when I got there.”
What more could the poor man have said? Boniface saw the implications of this immediately, of course, as George had known he would. Neither man had the heart to put into words the thought they shared.
“Have you told anyone?”
“I swore I would never tell even you, yet here I am. If anyone else has to know, you must tell them.”
And so Boniface had shouldered another cross. He embraced the groundskeeper and the two old men wept. The two of them seemed to have lived into old age only to see their world collapse around them. After George left, Boniface sat in silent agony, as Father Dowling could imagine.
“Could anyone else know this?”
“He commissioned me to do with it what I thought I should.” Boniface moved the tips of his fingers down the sides of his face. “Now I commission you, Father Dowling. You are close to Phil Keegan, the man investigating this murder.”
Now the moment had come for Father Dowling to tell Phil who listened with lifted brows.
“Sounds suspicious.”
“It does indeed.”
“I’ll have to talk to the son again, Roger.”
“You can imagine how hard it was for the father to tell Boniface this, and for Boniface to hear it.”
“I’m almost surprised he didn’t keep quiet about it.”
“And go on living with his son?”
“I’ll have Cy talk to him,” Phil said after a moment. “He can have the kid show him around the maintenance shed, ask about the cleaning up there. Maybe it won’t be necessary to let him know how we found out.”
Phil was a father himself, so perhaps this magnanimous suggestion was not surprising. If young George had a guilty secret, no one was more likely to induce him to blurt it out than the stolid Cy Horvath. No need to bring his father into it all, if things went right.
“You’re a good man, Phil Keegan.”
Phil was embarrassed. “Right now I’m a confused one. I thought we had our man in Stanley Morgan.”
“What has he said?”
“Just that he’s innocent. He is resisting getting a lawyer. He says he knows all about lawyers. The court will have to appoint one.”
“Maybe he is innocent.”
“Maybe the moon is made of green cheese.”
“What about young George?”
“We’ll see. If there’s really anything there, Cy will get it.”
13
Out of the depths, I have cried to You, O Lord.
—Psalm 130
Together and one at a time, taking turns, Phil Keegan and Cy Horvath, had talked with Stanley Morgan. Everything the man said contributed to the case against him. He had been shafted by Nathaniel, whom he knew as Richards, in California and had been left holding the bag when the financial consulting firm they jointly owned came under suspicion. Morgan could provide no proof of Richards’s involvement and himself became the object of an investigation for diverting investor’s money. The books showed that a significant sum had been transferred to a Zurich account, which Morgan explained as his partner Richards’s share of the profits. It was impossible to gain access to the Swiss bank account. Richards, according to Morgan kept the books, but again he had no proof of this. The secretary of the firm gave ambiguous testimony that hurt Morgan more than it helped him. He was persuaded to plead guilty to an innocuous charge, but the publicity had labeled him a defrauder of the elderly. So he spent a year in a minimum-security, white-colla
r crime institution near Fresno, easy duty as prison time goes, but more than enough solitude for him to reflect on what Richards had done to him.
“You wanted revenge?” Cy asked.
“Of course. Though not in the sense you probably mean,” replied Morgan.
“What do I probably mean?”
“I didn’t kill him. I intended to do him no physical harm. I wanted simply to confront him, to let him know that I had survived and that I was in the world.”
“You thought that would trouble him?”
“He was a funny guy. After he told me he’d been a priest, I thought I understood him.”
“How so?”
“Whatever he did, he wanted to retain his reputation. The way he explained leaving the priesthood was a good example. It wasn’t that he had abandoned it, but that it had failed to live up to his expectations. Everything was like that. His wife was different.”
“You knew her, too?”
“The three of us were very close. And then she died.”
The wife had been a nun, and she like Richards thought that the religious life had let her down, taken her best years under a false assumption. It got murky then, and neither Phil nor Cy could follow Morgan.
“So you served your time, got out, and tracked him down in Fox River. You showed up at Marygrove under a false name and asked to make a retreat.”
“It was my chance to confront him.”
“And how did that go?”
“What?”
“When you confronted him.”
“I never did. That was the irony. Once I settled in—they put me in the lodge with the Georges—I was in no rush. I had the luxury of being able to move slowly. He was there, I was there, it would happen.”
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