Pious Deception

by Susan Dunlap

  “Why not?

  “Bishop Dowd insisted. He was beside himself with panic, terrified that word would get out. When I told him I’d have to do a death certificate he turned the color of … this.” Elias scanned the liquor cabinet and scooped up a milk-glass bottle. “He said, ‘Don’t let on about this’—the way Austin died. I asked what he expected me to do. He just repeated, ‘Don’t let on about this.’ ”

  “So he didn’t specifically tell you to falsify the death certificate.”

  “Well, no.” Elias turned and replaced the bottle. “He was in too much of a frenzy to think that clearly. I don’t know how he’s going to get through this.”

  “Bishop Dowd can look out for himself. Believe me, Elias, I’ve known the man for years. He’s not the one who stands to lose his career.”

  “He won’t be thrown into the poorhouse, if that’s what you mean.” Elias hesitated, then sat on the pale leather sofa, patting the cushion beside him in invitation.

  She didn’t move.

  He sighed. “Aunt Sylvia, if I had said Austin was asphyxiated, the coroner would be looking at his body right now. There’d be a scandal. Dowd would never get to be archbishop. He wouldn’t even remain in charge of Mission San Leo. A scandal would dredge up everything. It would ruin his chances. And ours.”

  Under his trimmed mustache, his lip quivered infinitesimally. “And?” she prodded.

  His shoulders slumped; his head dropped, and a lock of thick, wavy hair flopped over his forehead.

  Again she resisted the urge to go to him. “Elias, I don’t have all night.”

  Looking up, he said, “Okay, okay. If I hadn’t signed that certificate, Dowd would have fired me. My job with the archdiocese is three-fourths of my income. I can’t afford to lose that business, or Dowd’s friendship. You, of all people, should know that. I have my mortgage, the payments on the boat, the car, the country club, the golf club, and the Rotary, and all those organizations I have to belong to. You know, Aunt Sylvia, you can only be up-and-coming so long. If I don’t make it now, in five years it’ll be too late. I can’t hang around till I’m fifty-two waiting for my ship to come in.”

  Sylvia fought to keep the signs of fury off her face. Never before had the boy stung her like that. She had waited too long before she made her move.

  Fifty-two, and not one notable commission. She’d assumed competence would be rewarded, because she worked harder than the men around her, because she could be counted on. She’d been a fool. It had taken her nearly thirty years to realize it. And it had taken the boy, what? Three? Or maybe he’d always known. She said, “And?”

  Elias flushed again. “I was his friend, Aunt Sylvia, his best friend.” He dropped his gaze. Almost in a whisper he added, “If he died like that, what would people think of me?”

  “Forget ‘people,’ Elias. The only person you need to worry about is right here. I asked one thing of you, and you didn’t do it.”

  He glared at her. “What do you mean? I ran fifteen miles a week. I listened to Austin carry on about his goddamned church, about the bishop, about Beth and the blowout they had when he dropped it on her that he was going to throw her out. If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have known anything had changed. You would have sailed along blindly.”

  “But you didn’t get me the one thing I need, did you, Elias? And when you were at the church, falsifying the death certificate—instead of windsurfing in Acapulco, like you told me—did you think to have a look in Austin’s rooms?”

  “The bishop was right there. What was I going to say? ‘Excuse me, Bishop, let me root through Austin’s things before I go?’ ”

  Sylvia Necri turned to face the picture window. To the east the sun was rising over Camelback Mountain, coming up over the house of her up-and-coming nephew. It wasn’t unusual for her to be awake at dawn. Seeing the clear yellow sun rise in the cloudless sky, so absolute, so perfect in its form, its presentation, renewed her will to face the duplicity everywhere beneath it. But today, though the sun peeked coquettishly over the hump of Camelback, it did not entrance her. She spun to face her nephew. “Elias, we have too much involved to stand back and wait to see what Dowd’s detective turns up. She has to be stopped. You have to get me what I need. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said with a determination she had never heard in his voice, “I understand completely.”

  8

  KIERNAN LEANED BACK IN the metal chair. At ten A.M. it was almost too hot to sit outside, even under the restaurant awning. There was an otherworldly quality to this desert city. Despite the carefully nurtured lawns and lakes in development after development and the fountains downtown, it had a space station look. In mid-morning not one person walked along the sidewalk or crossed the street. People were encapsulated in cars or, in the case of this restaurant Stu Wiggins had chosen, behind the plate-glass windows in the air-conditioned interior. “No one else’ll chance the patio,” Stu Wiggins had assured her as he settled into the chair by the street. “It’ll be as private as a conference room.” Although Wiggins had had breakfast with some other lawyers three hours ago at seven, he had managed to down two blueberry muffins and half the bacon on Kiernan’s plate.

  Wiggins had been a courthouse fixture for nearly forty years. “Saf” Wiggins, his cronies called him, the master of “slip and fall” cases. “Tell you what they say about me,” Wiggins had announced after closing the first of the two other cases he’d done with Kiernan in Phoenix. “The produce manager in the Hi-Qual market goes on break; a gal he fired comes by the plums and plops one on the floor; a man slips on the plum, and before his knee hits the floor, Stu Wiggins is there.” He’d thrown back his head and laughed. “I’m not that fast anymore. But the way I figure is people’ve got a responsibility to their neighbors. My job is to remind them of that. Getting paid on contingency keeps me honest. And it gives me time off to hire out on cases like yours.”

  She could picture him in court—a wiry sun-weathered man in a tan suit, tails of a bolo tie splaying out over a budding beer belly, spindly legs so bowed that she could almost see the overstretched external lateral ligaments on the outside of his knees. Before the judge he’d describe the chain of causation between the untended Hi-Qual produce counter and the broken kneecap. Then he’d slouch into the chair beside the crutch-laden plum victim, head thrust forward as if to ferret out the judge’s reaction precious seconds before the judge announced it.

  For Kiernan, Wiggins served a double purpose. Wiggins had the reputation, according to Sam Chase, of knowing all there was to know about everyone worth knowing about in Maricopa County. What facts he didn’t possess he’d make it his business to get. And, although he assisted her on cases, their contract stated that it was she who worked for him, the lawyer; for an out-of-state investigator, that provided an element of legitimacy.

  A truck rattled by, sending a gush of hot dusty exhaust across the patio. Aversion to heat was apparently not the only reason Phoenicians steered clear of the patio, Kiernan thought.

  Before she could mention that, Wiggins helped himself to her last piece of bacon and said, “So, Kerry, what kind of pretzel positions did you get yourself into this morning?”

  No one outside her family had ever called her Kerry, and even the family had stopped doing so, as if by unspoken accord, after Moira’s death. But despite the fact that she had worked with Wiggins for less than three weeks altogether over the last three years, coming from him, the nickname seemed right. She smiled at him. “I did back flips, Stu, twenty of them—backbend to handstand to forward bend. Viparita Chakrasana, the Wheel, the yogis call it. I figured I’d need all the energy I could get today.”

  “So that’s why you always want a ground-floor room, because you’re banging around doing your gym stuff?”

  “Sometimes when I’m in really good shape, I get an upstairs room and see if I can do it without disturbing the people below. But I’ve been known to misjudge.” She laughed.

 
A heavily loaded pickup made its way up the street. The driver’s weathered skin and the sand-worn finish of his truck marked them both as desert dwellers. A rusted bumper dangled precariously from the bed, slipping with each movement. Ten yards past the patio it banged to the street.

  Kiernan sat back and chewed thoughtfully on a blue corn muffin. “Did Austin Vanderhooven string himself up and die, intentionally or accidentally? Or did someone murder him? And if so, why would he be worth killing? If someone just wanted Vanderhooven dead, why kill him in church? It took time; it was hard; it was dangerous. Why this way?”

  Wiggins lifted his chin in question.

  “Okay,” Kiernan continued. “I asked myself what it accomplished. For one thing, silence. The church is trying their best to cover it up, and the parents certainly aren’t going to mention how he died.”

  “Kerry, I don’t know a whole lot about young Vanderhooven, but I’ll tell you about Raymond Dowd. He looks like he spends his days sitting in the confession box—or don’t they use those anymore?—guzzling hooch, right? But he’s got a taste for money; plays golf with the Camelback set—for the most part that’s old money around here. And in a business where you don’t get promoted till someone dies, Dowd’s done right well. He’s gotten himself on a heap of boards and committees. He should be in solid. But there’s something not quite right about him. Bitter. Must have expected more. He came here from Boston, and the powers in the church here have never trusted the guy. It’s like they’re afraid one night he’ll gather up all those holy bones they keep in their altars and cart them back East.”

  “But why?”

  “That I don’t know. You let me check. The lawyer for the archdiocese is a buddy of mine.”

  “They’re all buddies of yours, Stu.”

  “You know how it is with us old boys, Kerry.” A grin crossed Wiggins’s thin leathery face.

  Brakes screeched as the driver of a beige Cadillac came within inches of the fallen bumper. The big car bounced, and through its closed window Kiernan could see a white-haired woman jolt forward against her shoulder harness. In San Diego or San Francisco, Kiernan thought, all conversation would have stopped and people would have stared. But here there was no one on the sidewalk to do either. The streets were always empty.

  “First snowbirds of the season,” Wiggins said, pointing to its Ohio plates as the Caddy continued down the street. “Usually the white-hairs from up north don’t light here till winter.”

  “I guess to be a real snowbird you have to have escaped snow, huh? What about the Vanderhoovens? They’ve wintered in Phoenix for the last five years. Could Austin have been involved in something with them?”

  “Possible. Philip’s got connections, conservatives with money. He does some of their investing. I reckon when he settled here that first winter it was easy as slipping a slick hand into an old glove. I’ve heard rumors he’s handled a bit of mob money, all on the up and up. Word is he’s too smart and too well entrenched to chance anything shady.”

  “While you’re checking, see what you can find about the archdiocese.”

  “Right.”

  Kiernan took a swallow of coffee. It was cold, but not cold enough to mask the weak, bitter taste. Strong fresh-brewed coffee was one of the things she missed most when she traveled. “So, Stu, here’s another possibility. Maybe the killer, if there was a killer, chose this method of death to shine light on Austin Vanderhooven’s sex life. There was a pair of red lace bikini pants in his drawer.”

  Wiggins whistled. “How big were they? Can you rule out that he dressed up in them himself? I reckon guys who hang themselves for kicks don’t fret about an unsightly panty line.”

  Kiernan’s breath caught. Normally she would have laughed at a comment like that. “When his mother saw the bikinis, she assumed they belonged to a girlfriend.”

  “Guy’s got a girlfriend, too? I thought these guys took vows of chastity.”

  Kiernan shrugged. “This one’s open to interpretation. According to his father, the romance was nothing more than an adolescent fling—well before his son ever thought of the priesthood. He could be right, of course, but, according to the Vanderhoovens the girl lived with Austin in San Diego. She wrote to him when he was in graduate school in New York. And now”—Kiernan paused—“she’s here in Phoenix.”

  Stu raised his eyebrows. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find on her. And?” The eyebrows went a notch higher.

  “Here’s his calendar. Most of it’s pretty straightforward: altar guild meetings, a talk at the Knights of Columbus. But there are one or two questions. This, for instance.” She pointed to the words “Hohokam Lodge” inscribed in one square of the calendar. “Know anything about that? Apparently he was there last Saturday. And this Saturday, tomorrow, it looks like he was planning to go some place called Cerrito del Oro—”

  “Little hill of gold.”

  Kiernan nodded. “But there’s a line through that, and above it he’s written ‘McKinley.’ ”

  “Anything else? You’re looking at a battalion of employees here. I’m glad the Catholic Church is paying.”

  “These names: G. Hayes, Maria Vasquez, Ann Applegate, Joe Zekk.”

  He wrote down the names, one under another, then flipped his pad shut and laid it on the table. “Now tell me, with all you’ve given the boss to do, what is there left for you?”

  “The doctor who signed the phony death certificate. Dowd said he was a friend of Vanderhooven’s, ran with him three mornings a week. If there’s anyone who should be able to tell me about Austin Vanderhooven it should be him.”

  “You think he will?”

  “If he wants to go on practicing medicine he will.”

  9

  BACK IN HER MOTEL room, Kiernan slid a foot into her running shoe and propped it on the edge of the table to tie the lace. It was too hot outside for running shoes but she had no choice. It was too hot for jeans, too, and for her long-sleeved yellow shirt. She held the phone between ear and shoulder. She was at the point of hanging the receiver up—it had rung twelve times—when a harried female voice answered. “Dr. Necri’s office. Doctor isn’t in. Can I put you on hold?”

  “Doesn’t he have patients scheduled?”

  “I’m rescheduling now. Hold, please.” The button clicked and elevator music came on.

  Where was Necri? Doctors did not disappear Friday mornings, not with patients scheduled. As one of her professors had said, “Half this business is based on trust. Patients will sit in your waiting room for hours, because they believe in you. But cancel an appointment without good reason and patients will suddenly realize you’re merely human. Their implicit trust will be gone. Never again will they automatically believe your diagnosis, or that the medication you prescribe is bound to work. Whatever there is to the placebo effect will be gone. They’ll question more, heal slower, and be potential pains in the ass.”

  So why was Elias Necri making his patients wait now? Had the sheriff gotten to him already?

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the woman said.

  “When will Dr. Necri be in?”

  “At one.”

  “This is Dr. O’Shaughnessy,” Kiernan said, playing one of her trumps. “Where can I call Dr. Necri? Is he at the hospital?”

  “Oh, Doctor, I’m sorry. He didn’t leave a number.”

  So much for trumps. “Tell him I will be in his office at one.” She hung up and dialed Bishop Dowd’s rectory, hoisting the second shoe up for tying as the phone rang.

  Dowd’s housekeeper announced that the bishop had left at twenty to eight, as he did every Friday morning.

  Kiernan dialed again.

  “Archdiocese of Phoenix, Rita Gomez speaking,” a scratchy voice said over a scratchy connection.

  “This is Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. Bishop Dowd is expecting my call.”

  There was a pause before the woman said, “His Grace is out right now. Can I take a message?”

  The edginess was evident in her voice.
Had Dowd come in at all? Had the sheriff called on him, perhaps taken him to the scene of the hanging? “It’s important that I reach him. Is he at Mission San Leo?”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “He, eh, wouldn’t be there on Friday morning. He’s, uhm, with the Sheltons at the Self-Help Center downtown.”

  Deciding to see where this story led, Kiernan asked, “Where is the Self-Help Center?”

  “Near Sixteenth and Buckeye.”

  “Is Bishop Dowd in charge?” That would fit Stu Wiggins’s description of him as a man with a highly visible finger in half the local pies.

  “Oh, no. They just call him when they have an emergency.”

  “A bishop? What kind of emergency?”

  “Oh, well, the Sheltons. They know they can count on him. Such a good man. With all his responsibilities it’s not easy for him to drop everything and run down there. Not many bishops would do that. Not time and time again.”

  And not thirty-six hours after his subordinate was found hanging in the church! Rita Gomez had relaxed audibly when she talked of the needy Sheltons, as if slipping comfortably into a small pocket of truth. Kiernan asked, “What has the bishop done for the Sheltons?”

  “Just about everything there is. He’s found them jobs, good jobs. He’s gotten them food more times than I’d care to say, even though they can get dinner at the Self-Help Center like all the rest of them. Sometimes he even gets them Knights of Columbus funds, and they’re not supposed to go to the same people more than twice in a six-month period. They just don’t know how lucky they are to have a man like Bishop Dowd.”

  “Taking advantage, huh?”

  She could almost hear the woman clicking her teeth together, deciding whether circumstances justified the indiscretion pushing to escape her mouth. “He could find them seats in the choir of angels, and they’d complain about the noise.”

  Kiernan laughed. “It sounds like they’ve been around for a long time. But there are plenty of deserving poor, so why did the bishop choose to help them? Were the Sheltons in his parish when he was a priest?”