Prodigal Father

by Ralph McInerny

  “Cat and mouse?”

  “Cat and mouse.”

  “And then you confronted him.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “And then he was killed.”

  “I was astounded. But before that happened I went back to Father Boniface and told him my name really wasn’t Sullivan, and that I had known the man he called Father Nathaniel in California. That way I felt certain that he would know I was there. And he would know others knew.”

  “You expected him to seek you out?”

  “Whatever. One way or the other, it seemed inevitable that we would meet, living there at Marygrove.”

  “Look, if you went to all this trouble to find him, it stands to reason that you went ahead and did what you had come to do.”

  “But I didn’t. I waited. Do you think I’m not sorry I did?”

  “Are you?”

  “Now it is something that can never be resolved. For the rest of my life …”

  “Morgan, you are going to be indicted for the murder of Father Nathaniel. Everything points to you.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “So who did? Murders are seldom complicated, you know. It’s usually pretty obvious who did it. In this case, the obvious one is you.”

  “I’m innocent.”

  “You better get a lawyer.”

  Morgan laughed. He was a pleasant enough guy, but unreal. He said what he said with apparent sincerity yet at the same time did not expect to be believed.

  “You’ll get a lawyer whether you want one or not.”

  “It won’t be my responsibility. So I go back inside. I almost miss it. Staying there with those priests was like being back. Maybe that’s why I was in no rush. I felt at ease again.”

  “He’s a goner,” Phil said to Cy after they let Morgan return to his cell where maybe he could feel at ease.

  “Funny guy. California must be a strange place.”

  It helped not to feel vindictive toward the person you were investigating for murder. The newspaper accounts of the slaying of Nathaniel treated it as particularly horrible because the victim was a priest. The way Judas was a priest, Phil thought. He got nowhere with Roger Dowling when he vented his anger at priests like Nathaniel who went on leave, got married, then wanted to come back as if they could shuck the intervening years like skin. It wasn’t that he thought Morgan had the right to kill Nathaniel because he’d been a renegade priest, but it didn’t have the same shock value as it might have if Nathaniel had spent his life where he belonged, living the life of a priest. Of course, none of this would have happened then.

  And now came the twist that young George had been seen by his father coming out of the maintenance shed when he went there to report finding Nathaniel at the grotto with an ax in his back. The ax was from the maintenance shed. There were oddities about the shed that Pippen had turned up. Someone had cleaned it up, someone had hurriedly painted the corner of the work bench. When Nathaniel’s sunglasses were found in the shed, the paint was removed and found to cover some of Nathaniel’s blood. All this pointed to the attack having been made in the maintenance shed. Young George popping out of there at the crack of dawn when his father came running to use the phone, sounded like good news for Morgan. So why didn’t Cy Horvath think so?

  “There’s more physical evidence pointing toward the boy than in the case of Morgan, isn’t there, Cy?”

  “We don’t have any physical evidence against Morgan.”

  “So why don’t these facts shake your convictions?”

  “I want to talk to the kid.”

  Roger had interpreted his reaction to the news as some kind of heroic virtue. Well, Phil didn’t want the kid to know that his father had brought suspicion on him, if he could help it. But part of that was the unlikelihood that, in the crunch, a father would be a witness against his son. And so far at least it was only the father’s testimony that put young George in the maintenance shed at a suspicious time.

  14

  You have shown your people hard things.

  —Psalm 60

  Edna waited anxiously to be confronted with the fact that she had provided Stanley Morgan with a hiding place in the old nurse’s office on the third floor of the school, but nothing happened. When Cy Horvath discovered Stanley Morgan, he had said nothing to Edna and she had found this ominous, as if he did not want to dilute the arrest of Morgan with taking her to task for what she had done. When Stanley was taken away it came home to her that what she had done could be construed as a crime, even if at the time Stanley was accused of nothing. How then could she be said to have harbored a criminal? Or a suspected criminal?

  But all the excuses she thought of made her dread having to state them aloud in self-defense. And she was sure that it was Father Dowling who would ask for an explanation. And then, with the passage of time, it became inescapable that Cy Horvath had not said anything to anyone. Edna did not know quite how to react to this. But, of course, it was Marie Murkin who fussed about the circumstances of Stanley Morgan’s arrest.

  “On the third floor of the school!” she cried, in a simulated state of shock.

  “In the nurse’s office.”

  “How on earth did he think of hiding there?”

  “You must have made him feel at home here.”

  Marie looked at Edna sharply, then saw it as a compliment. “That’s true. But, Edna, imagine him knocking at the rectory door when I knew they were looking for him.”

  Marie was soon caught up in this possible drama and wanted to explore the many and various reactions she might have had.

  “I don’t think I could have turned him away,” she said.

  “But where could you have hidden him?”

  Marie fell silent, perhaps thinking of various hiding places in the rectory. “If I did hide him, I could never have turned him in.”

  “I suppose the question is, why did he want to hide anywhere?”

  “Oh, that’s obvious. And I don’t mean he’s guilty. But if you’d been through what he has, no matter how innocent you were, you’d run, too.”

  “I suppose.”

  Later, it was Marie who relayed to Edna the news about the groundskeeper finding his son in the maintenance shed when he had gone to sound the alarm after finding the body.

  “Now, Edna, this is absolutely confidential. The boy mustn’t dream that his father made this known.”

  Edna crossed her heart and hoped to die.

  “But how can one feel relief? This lets Stanley Morgan off the hook, but only because Michael George now looks like the one.”

  “But why on earth would he have killed that priest?”

  There was no doubt that Marie got more information at the rectory than Edna could ever get at the school, thanks largely to the frequent visits of Captain Phil Keegan. Edna had always felt ambiguous toward Keegan and Horvath because of her experience with the police when Earl fell afoul of the law. All the more reason for her surprise and gratitude that Cy Horvath did not press her on how Stanley Morgan happened to be hiding in the nurse’s office on the third floor of the school. He must have sensed, when he appeared in the doorway, that Edna was talking with Stanley in a conspiratorial way. Now with her fears lifted and with Marie Murkin accepting the suggestion that she herself was the target of Stanley Morgan’s seeking refuge at St. Hilary’s, she realized how she had been governed by her feelings rather than by her head when Stanley Morgan appeared in her office and put himself in her hands. How foolish that had been. How long could Stanley expect to elude the police. And why had Cy Horvath shown up at the nurse’s office?

  It was inescapable that the fact that she had had dinner with Stanley Morgan, that she had allowed him to take her and the kids to a ball game, was anything but a secret. Had that been enough for Lieutenant Horvath to decide to check out the school? But now when she thought of the son of the groundskeeper she was certain she would act equally foolishly to help him, and she did not even know the boy. Instinctively, she found hers
elf sympathizing with anyone in trouble with the law. Well, not anyone.

  The newspaper reports omitted any mention that Stanley Morgan had been arrested at St. Hilary’s. Marie reacted to this strangely.

  “I suppose it’s just as well,” she said, and sighed.

  “How so?”

  Marie looked at Edna, then let her eyes drift away. For heaven’s sake. Edna felt a girlish impulse to tell Marie which of them Stanley Morgan had really been interested in. Instead, she hurried back to the school. If she didn’t watch out, she would become another Marie Murkin.

  15

  The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.

  —Psalm 16

  Amos Cadbury was having lunch at the Cliffdwellers Club near the Chicago Art Institute. His primary loyalty was to Fox River, but he was perforce a Chicagoan and held memberships in both the University Club and the Cliffdwellers, which were often more convenient places to meet with certain clients and colleagues than his office in Fox River. He and Lars Anderson had finished dining, they were sipping Mirto, a Sardinian liqueur Anderson insisted he try. Amos found the liqueur everything Anderson had said it was.

  “How did you come upon it?”

  “On vacation in Alghero, a lovely town on the west coast of Sardinia. Have you ever been there?”

  “To Sardinia? No.”

  Amos had grown up in a time when a trip to Europe meant taking a train to the East Coast and then sailing from Manhattan or Newark, a six-day voyage to Southampton, then a Channel boat to France, long train journeys to Italy and Rome. This he had done with his wife on their honeymoon trip, and like the honeymoon itself it had not seemed a repeatable performance. Now people were driven to O’Hare and seven or eight hours later dropped any place on the globe, and many did it. It surprised Amos that Anderson, a man his own age, should talk so casually of visiting Sardinia!

  “Do you ever go to Rome?” Amos asked.

  “I didn’t like it.”

  Amos said nothing. He and Mrs. Cadbury had put up at the Hassler in Rome and seen everything, ancient, medieval, Renaissance. As part of a sizable group they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Those memories, vivid after the passage of years, had served for a lifetime. But Rome had been the high point of their European experience. Amos sipped his Mirto, finding it very good indeed.

  “Charlotte Priebe has been to see you,” Anderson said.

  “A remarkable young woman.”

  “I wish I had a son like her. Or a daughter. Sometimes I feel I am just building castles in the sand.” Anderson’s hair had grayed, but it still looked blond and his weathered complexion told of hours on building sites. Or was that the Sardinian sun? “I seem to have gotten to old age instead without someone I can pass things on to.”

  “The way Maurice Corbett did?”

  Anderson frowned. “I used to think a man like that was nuts. Handing over huge sums of money as well as his estate to strangers.”

  “I don’t suppose he thought of the Athanasians as strangers exactly.”

  “It’s not because they’re priests. I make charitable contributions, who doesn’t, but it seems part of making out my taxes. I have been asked to endow a museum. They say they would name it after me. It would be filled with pictures I couldn’t understand, if there is anything in such paintings to be understood. What I want is to leave something that is mine, things I’ve built. I suppose that’s what Corbett had in mind, give it to those priests and it would be kept up, the house he built, the grounds.”

  “They have certainly done that, and more.”

  “I bid on some of their buildings but didn’t get the contract.” But the slight frown was fleeting. “Some time I’ll show you the model of what I would like to do with that property if I can get hold of it. It would be my monument.”

  Perhaps Mirto made one philosophical. Lars Anderson had come to the time of life when he wondered about the significance of what he had done. An Anderson home was a byword west of Chicago. But gaudy and expensive as many of them were, Anderson dreamt of something lasting. Perhaps Father Dowling would think of this desire as a surrogate of eternity.

  “Maybe you will get your chance.”

  “I hope so.” Anderson hunched over the table.

  “Miss Priebe put your case very well. The Athanasians are a dwindling Order. I think that even they must wonder if they are destined to survive. There are vast acres of their property that they would not have done much with even in their years of flourishing.”

  “They would never regret selling to me.”

  “But what of the grandson?”

  Anderson smiled slyly. “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

  “Oh?”

  “He put himself in the hands of fools.”

  “Tuttle.”

  “Tuttle. The boy, too, might have gotten something if he hadn’t wanted everything.”

  “Have you spoken with him?”

  “Charlotte has.”

  “And?”

  “He won’t know what hit him.”

  Amos had no love for Leo Corbett, but Anderson’s rough business sense seemed hard on the grandson of Maurice Corbett. Perhaps the Athanasians might be more amenable to seeing that the young man got something. But Anderson wanted to get down to cases on the Corbett property and Amos reined him in.

  “I have not yet put the matter in this new light before Father Boniface, the superior. Recent events have made that unseemly for the moment. But I will make the strongest case I can for some such compromise as Miss Priebe brought.”

  Anderson thrust forward a great hand, and Amos took it, wondering how many witnesses in the dining room noticed it.

  “So far as my own inclination goes, we are of one mind,” Amos said.

  “I’m sure the priests always take your advice.”

  Amos smiled. “I try to give such advice that its refusal is not attractive. In this case, I think what you are proposing is the happiest of compromises.”

  “Good.” Anderson sat back. “Let me tell you a little secret. Charlotte Priebe talked to you before she told me anything about it.”

  “What a singular young woman.”

  “One of the shrewdest associates I have ever had.”

  “She would have made a great lawyer.”

  “It would have been a waste. No offense. I expect that some day she will offer to buy me out.”

  “She seems a mere girl.”

  Anderson shook his head. “She’s tough as nails.”

  “And would you sell?”

  “After what I want to do with the Corbett property? Perhaps. It would be interesting to negotiate with her.”

  “You could settle in Sardinia and drink this.”

  And the two men touched glasses and finished off their Mirto.

  16

  The Lord tests the righteous.

  —Psalm 11

  Rita Martinez was devastated when Michael George was questioned about the murder of Father Nathaniel. Lieutenant Horvath had talked with him at the lodge first and then asked him to come downtown and go through it all again with Captain Keegan. Afterward, they had let him go home, but it seemed only a matter of time before something worse happened. And then he had come to her.

  The boy she had loved because he had such a stable family, such a wonderful prospect in life, carrying on after his father, was a fading memory now. Despite the obstacles there had been before, neither she nor Michael had believed anything could stand in the way of their marriage and their life together. Rita was confident that theirs would be a Catholic wedding, whether or not Michael came into the Church. It was not simply that all that had changed now. While Rita listened to Michael, she found herself doubting what he said.

  “Rita, I saw the body first.” He paused. “I got up early and before breakfast I went over to the shed. That place is so wonderful at the beginning of the day, large, quiet, dark, the smell of oil and gas, all the machinery and tools in perfect order. When the large doors are opened from inside, you
look out as if from a cave to the grounds, the trees, the plants, the lawn, as the sun strikes them for the first time that day.”

  This was the Michael she loved, but all this was prelude to his great revelation.

  “That’s why I liked to go over to the shed even before breakfast. Passing the grotto, I saw one of the priests kneeling there, but I didn’t really look at him. I kept on to the maintenance shed. What a shock when I went inside. It was a mess. It looked like some drunk had been in there, crashing around. My first thought was vandals.” He looked at her. She knew what he meant. There were boys who resented her going with this gringo. “I started to straighten things up. I didn’t want my father to see the shed like that. And then I saw blood.”

  He couldn’t say it. He stared at her, wanting her to know his thought but not express it either. It was too horrible.

  “I cleaned up as best as I could and then I heard something. I opened the door …”

  His father had come running toward him. “The telephone. Something awful has happened.”

  “Rita, I listened to him when he talked with Father Boniface. I went back to the grotto and saw that Nathaniel was dead. An ax in his back.”

  Rita shuddered but would not let him take her in his arms.

  “That’s it. My father was running around. He didn’t even seem to notice the mess the shed was in. When he left, I finished the cleaning up I had started.”

  “Cleaning up?”

  “Yes. But the blood left stains. I decided to paint over it.”

  “But why?” He had to put it into words for her. Michael looked past her, then met her eyes.

  “I didn’t want my father to see it.”

  “Oh, Michael.”

  What would the police make of a story like that. Michael had developed a deep dislike for Father Nathaniel. “I’d like to drug him or get him drunk and ship him back to California,” he had said once. “Buy him a ticket, pour him onto the plane. Maybe he wouldn’t dare come back a second time. He’s ruining everything.”

  She wanted to tell him that their happiness did not depend on his living as his father had lived. He could find another job. She did say that, but her heart sank when she did. Her dreams of the future involved herself and Michael settled in the lodge, living with his parents until …